Siena wedding venues

A Siena wedding runs €150,000 to €750,000 all-in for 40 guests, €200,000 to €750,000 for 80, and €250,000 to €1,200,000 at 150. Catering is €160 to €270 a head before drinks. Magic Day weddings in Siena start from €100,000.

The range is wide, and it is a range of properties rather than of guest counts.

At one end is a family house let whole with its gardens, where the hire is a small part of the wedding and everything else arrives on a lorry. At the other is a castle hotel with its own kitchen and spa, taken whole for three nights on minimums that do not move whether 60 guests come or 150.

Where a wedding realistically lands, venue by venue:

• Castello di Casole: near €1,200,000, from €800,000
• Borgo Santo Pietro: near €750,000, from €550,000
• Castello di San Fabiano: near €300,000, from €200,000
• Borgo Stomennano: near €300,000, from €200,000
• Villa Cetinale: near €300,000, from €200,000
• Borgo Laticastelli: near €250,000, from €150,000
• Villa di Geggiano: near €250,000, from €150,000
• Castello di Celsa: near €250,000, from €150,000

Against Florence, the same wedding costs less here at the middle of the range and more at the top, because the estates around Siena sell space by the night and the city sells it by the evening. The Tuscany page sets the countryside comparison out across the whole region.

Magic Day has been established in Florence at 41 Via Simone Martini since 2014.

Magic Day has planned weddings across 11 countries since 2008, and the hills around Siena are planned from the same office as Florence. A wedding planner in Siena starts with the hill rather than the house, because the Montagnola, the Val di Merse and the Crete Senesi are different weddings before anyone has seen a venue.

Every estate on this page is taken whole, and five of the eight bring in their caterer. That means a kitchen, furniture, a marquee where the indoor capacity runs out, and a supplier list we build and run for each one.

Then the Italian administration: a nulla osta from your embassy, sworn translations with apostilles, and a booking at the comune, over three to six months. Two of these estates hold the civil ceremony on site, and at the rest we schedule the legal half at the town hall around the weekend.

And the local knowledge a Siena wedding needs. Which estate’s late hours are a staffing cost and which are a rule, which Saturdays the Palio takes, and which hotels inside the walls can take a coach at one in the morning.

Tell us the month, the guest count and whether you want a house or a hotel, and we will tell you which of these hills fits the wedding before anything is booked.

Eight estates, each with a page of its own carrying the capacity by space, the rooms and what a wedding there costs. They sort by what a couple is choosing between, which here is size, a whole village, a family house or a working farm.

For numbers. Two properties hold a wedding of 150 or more under a roof or a marquee, and they could not be more different.

A castle in the clay hills of the Crete Senesi half an hour south of Siena, with a loggia garden, a pavilion in the grounds and indoor rooms that seat 320 guests. Only 22 sleep at the castle, so the rest of a large wedding stays in Siena and comes out by shuttle.

A castle on a ridge towards Volterra with a village of stone houses around its courtyard and an open-air amphitheatre cut into the slope. The whole hotel is taken for three nights, all 41 rooms with it, for 150 guests as standard and up to 180 under a larger marquee.

For a whole hamlet. Two medieval borghi taken entire, each with its own piazza, where the wedding and most of the guests share the same walls.

A hamlet east of Siena near Rapolano Terme, with a restaurant terrace over the valley, a fountain garden and 32 rooms sleeping up to 80. It takes 120 guests outdoors and holds the civil ceremony on site.

A private hamlet below the walls of Monteriggioni, with a colonnaded loggia framing the valley and a cypress avenue lined with statues. It takes 90 guests and sleeps 38, 23 minutes from the Campo.

For a family house. Three houses still owned by the families who built or inherited them, let whole with their gardens.

An 18th-century villa six kilometres from Siena, in the same family since 1527, with a green theatre cut from laurel hedges and painted rooms that keep their original wallpapers. It takes 180 on its lawns and is licensed for the civil ceremony.

A baroque villa of the 1680s in the wooded Montagnola west of Siena, with a holy wood behind it and a staircase of three hundred steps up to a hermitage. It lets by the week and seats 100 in the garden.

A thirteenth-century castle west of the city, held by the same family for four centuries, with an Italian garden, an English wood and a round chapel standing alone on the lawn. Eleven rooms sleep 22, and the ceremony and dinner move between the chapel lawn, the courtyard and the Granary.

For a working farm. One estate where the gardens and the kitchen are the reason to come.

A thirteenth-century villa on a 300-acre organic estate in the Val di Merse, with thirteen acres of garden and its own farm and dairy supplying the kitchen. The roofless abbey of San Galgano is a few kilometres away, and both it and the round church of Montesiepi will host a ceremony, which we arrange.

Read the full Borgo Santo Pietro wedding guide for the three-night sole use, the minimums that run alongside it and what a wedding there costs.

Siena sits at the centre of four quite different landscapes, and all eight venues are within an hour of the Campo.

North, on the city’s doorstep. Villa di Geggiano is six kilometres out among the first Chianti Classico vines, and Borgo Stomennano sits below the walled ring of Monteriggioni. Both are close enough that guests sleeping inside Siena are at the wedding in under half an hour.

West, in the Montagnola and the Val di Merse. Wooded hills around Sovicille hold Villa Cetinale and Castello di Celsa, and further out, past Chiusdino, Borgo Santo Pietro stands near the ruined abbey of San Galgano. This is the greenest country around Siena and the coolest on an August evening.

North-west, towards Volterra. Castello di Casole sits on its own ridge above the Val d’Elsa, eleven minutes from Casole d’Elsa, in country that feels Etruscan rather than Renaissance.

South and east, in the Crete Senesi. The clay hills, covered in their own section below.

The bare, rolling clay hills between Siena and the Val d’Orcia are the landscape most people mean when they picture Tuscany without knowing its name. Green and soft in spring, they turn gold after the harvest and stay that way into autumn, with single farmhouses and lines of cypress on the ridges.

Two of these venues stand in or beside them. Castello di San Fabiano at Lucignano d’Arbia is a brick castle half an hour south of the city, and Borgo Laticastelli near Rapolano Terme looks across the same country from the east.

The Crete are also the most exposed country around Siena: there is little shade on a clay ridge, so a June ceremony belongs in the late afternoon.

Yes, and near Siena the question has three different answers depending on the estate.

On the estate itself. Villa di Geggiano is licensed for civil weddings, so the legal ceremony takes place at the villa. Borgo Laticastelli holds a civil ceremony on site with a celebrant. At both, the ceremony guests see is the legal one.

At the town hall nearby. For Castello di Casole the civil ceremony is at the town hall of Casole d’Elsa, eleven minutes away, for up to 150 guests, and a Catholic wedding can take the Collegiata in the same town. Castello di San Fabiano is five minutes from the town hall of Monteroni d’Arbia.

Symbolic on the day, legal in the week. At Villa Cetinale, Castello di Celsa and Borgo Stomennano the ceremony at the venue is symbolic, and the legal half is a morning at Sovicille or Monteriggioni. Borgo Santo Pietro’s blessing has the abbey of San Galgano a few kilometres away, and we schedule the comune around it.

The paperwork is the standard Italian set: a nulla osta from your embassy, passports, birth certificates, sworn translations and apostilles, with an interpreter unless you both speak Italian. It takes three to six months, and we start it with the embassy.

The hills around Siena are generous with the music hour, because most of these estates stand alone in their own land with nobody in earshot. That is the clearest difference from Florence, where a palace in the centre has neighbours above it.

The hours, venue by venue:

• Borgo Laticastelli: two in the morning outdoors, and no closing time indoors in the estate’s own terms
• Castello di San Fabiano: midnight outdoors, three in the morning indoors, but midnight in the Pavilion
• Villa Cetinale: one in the morning
• Castello di Casole: eleven outdoors and one indoors on a buyout, with later hours subject to the hotel’s approval
• Borgo Stomennano: agreed with the estate for the date, in a valley with no neighbour

Three estates set no music curfew at all: the contract sets the hour and prices the late ones. Borgo Santo Pietro includes its staff until one and charges by the hour after, Castello di Celsa runs from nine in the morning to two and extends by the hour, and Villa di Geggiano’s hire runs to midnight with one more hour available. At those three, the end of the night is a line in the budget.

San Fabiano’s Pavilion is the one to plan around. If rain moves the dinner there, the curfew moves with it to midnight, so we keep the dancing in the castle’s indoor rooms on a wet night.

Florence Peretola is the airport for every venue on this page, and the transfer is longer than guests expect.

From Peretola it is an hour and five minutes to Borgo Stomennano, an hour and 17 to Castello di Casole, an hour and 25 to Villa di Geggiano, an hour and a half to Cetinale, Celsa, Laticastelli and San Fabiano, and an hour and 46 to Borgo Santo Pietro. Pisa is two hours or a little more from most of them, and Bologna about two from the estates north of the city.

For the venues south and east of the city the order changes. Perugia is an hour and 20 from Borgo Laticastelli, closer than Florence, and Rome Fiumicino is just under three hours from it.

Fiumicino is the airport with direct flights from the United States, three to three and three-quarter hours from these estates. Americans often land in Rome and spend a night in Florence or Siena on the way.

Siena itself has a railway station fifteen minutes from Villa di Geggiano, and the city is the natural base: most of these venues are 23 to 39 minutes from its gates, and we run the shuttles in both directions.

May to October, and May and September are the months we push.

July and August are hot this far inland, with no sea to temper them, and the shade on a Crete Senesi ridge is thin. The garden estates of the Montagnola carry the heat better, and an August wedding there wants a late start and a long table under the trees.

Then the Palio. Siena runs its horse race in the Campo on 2 July and 16 August, and the days around each are when the city’s hotels fill and its streets close, so a wedding that sleeps its guests inside the walls avoids both weekends.

September brings the harvest in the vines around Geggiano and gold over the Crete, and it is the month we would take. October is lovely and carries rain risk, which on this page means the indoor capacity: Villa Cetinale seats 100 in the garden, 26 in the house and about 80 in the limonaia.

Two of these venues sleep a large part of a wedding themselves. Castello di Casole’s buyout includes all 41 rooms, and Borgo Laticastelli’s 32 bedrooms sleep up to 80.

The rest sleep between 10 and 44: Borgo Santo Pietro 44, Borgo Stomennano 38, Villa Cetinale 25 with 23 more in the estate’s houses, Castello di San Fabiano and Castello di Celsa 22 each, and Villa di Geggiano 10.

That is where Siena earns its place on the map. A city of hotels at every price inside the walls, within half an hour of most of these estates, means a guest list of 120 can spread across three or four of them and choose what it spends.

We take the venue’s own rooms for family first, block two or three hotels in Siena, and publish one guest page with the shuttle times both ways.

The hill is the first decision. The Montagnola is woods and gardens, the Crete Senesi bare clay and big skies, the Val di Merse deep country an hour out. We match the landscape to the wedding before looking at any one house.

Every estate here is taken whole. None of these estates hires out a room for an evening, only the whole property for a day, a weekend or a week. We price the weekend from the first conversation rather than the evening.

The indoor number decides October. Villa Cetinale seats 100 in its garden and about 80 in its limonaia, and San Fabiano’s Pavilion drops the music to midnight. We plan the wet-weather version first and the dry one second.

Late hours are often a cost, not a rule. At three of these estates no music curfew is set and the contract hour is, so the last dance is a figure we budget rather than a door that shuts.

The Palio fills Siena twice a summer. On 2 July and 16 August the city’s hotels and streets belong to the race. We recommend avoiding those weekends for a wedding that sleeps its guests in Siena.

Siena is the guest house. Most of these venues sleep fewer people than they seat, and the city half an hour away solves that better than any farmhouse rental can.

Florence Peretola, and the long transfer. Every estate here is an hour or more from the airport, and guests who know that in advance arrive in a better mood.