Villa Petrolo: Marry at a Medici sculptor's villa above the Valdarno

The villa is a confident piece of early 18th-century Tuscany. Cream render, dark green shutters, a painted coat of arms above the balcony, a hipped roof of weathered terracotta. Inside it stays honest rather than showy: terracotta floors, tall shuttered windows, a green iron chandelier over the dining table, a longcase clock in a red case, chintz armchairs pulled up to a wide hooded fireplace. The estate's farmhouses are the rustic counterpoint, all ochre plaster, reed pergolas and brick-lattice lofts.

Massimiliano Soldani Benzi grew up on this farm and came back to it. He spent his career as a sculptor and medalist to the Medici, and from 1688 he ran their mint in Florence as Master of Dies. Around 1700 he built the villa you'll stand in front of, as his own house. He retired here near 80 and died here in 1740. The hill was settled long before him: the castle of Galatrona appears in a document of 963, and Cosimo III named this valley a fine-wine zone in 1716.

You're in the Valdarno, on the southeastern edge of Chianti, in the province of Arezzo. Mercatale Valdarno, the nearest village, sits a kilometer and a half down the hill with a bar, a bakery and a pharmacy. Arezzo is 32 km away, Siena 47 and Florence 57, so all three are day trips rather than expeditions. What you see from the terrace is farmland, not scenery: vines, olive terraces and oak woods running up to the ridge. That setting is what brings couples here when they're deciding where to get married in Italy.

The medieval tower of Galatrona is about a kilometer up the marked path, twenty minutes on foot. Volunteers open it from April to October, and the climb pays out in the whole Valdarno and the Chianti ridge beyond. The parish church sits 300 meters below the villa, a five-minute walk, and its glazed terracottas by Giovanni della Robbia are worth the detour. Paths carry on through the oak woods to the hamlets of San Leolino, Cennina and Solata. Arezzo, Siena and Florence are each under an hour by car.

There's plenty to fill four days with. The pool measures 6 by 12 meters and opens from early May to early October. There's a tennis court ringed by cypresses, a billiard room, a piano and table tennis for the in-between hours. Three small private lakes on the estate are stocked for fishing, and bikes can be hired at the gate. The cellar is a working one, so a tasting is a walk across the yard rather than a drive.

Florence airport is the one to aim for: 75 km, a little over an hour by car. Pisa is 146 km and Bologna 159 km, both worth a look if the fare is better. By train, Montevarchi-Terranuova sits 8 km away on the Florence to Arezzo mainline, and Bucine station is 6 km. Airport transfers can be arranged through the estate for a fee. The last stretch is hill road and gravel drive, so a small hire car beats a large one.

It is best to tell us early if anyone in your party has trouble on their feet. As with many historic estates, the Villa Petrolo is not specifically made to be fully accessible. There are stone steps and gravel paths to navigate.

Parts of the estate are level: the garden as well as some of the ground-floor rooms that open straight onto the terrace. Let our planner know if you are unsure about accessibility and we will connect with the venue for you to make absolutely sure.

Everyone sleeps on the estate, which is rather the point. The villa holds 16 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms over three floors, sleeping up to 33, with a suite kept for the couple. Five more farmhouses are scattered across the hillside: La Costa, La Vigna, Bòggina, Feriale I and Feriale II. Together they take the party to around 75, and two of them have a pool of their own. Stays are exclusive and run four nights at a minimum, or seven from late June to late August.

You have two quite different options. The garden takes up to 100 for an outdoor ceremony, usually on the lawn below the villa's curved stone steps, under a cedar of Lebanon wide enough to shade the whole party. Or you walk 300 meters downhill to the Pieve di Galatrona, a Romanesque parish church standing here since the 900s, for a Catholic service. The estate helps with the paperwork behind a legal marriage, and our planner in Italy handles the town hall, the translations and the timings on the day.

The garden is a proper Italian one: wedges of grass around a stone basin, with brick-edged gravel paths radiating out from the house. Off to one side sits a circular room of pleached fruit trees, big enough for one long table and lit with lanterns after dark. The semicircular forecourt under the facade is where dinner usually goes, festoon lights strung overhead and potted lemons along the edge. A cypress avenue runs downhill from the front door toward the valley floor.

Dinner is normally outside, on gravel, under strung lights, and the estate sets the end of the reception at midnight. If the weather turns, the salone measures 12 by 6 meters and four connecting ground-floor rooms add another 150 square meters. Fifty is the sensible indoor number, so a marquee goes up for anything larger. The salone has a Murano glass chandelier, and the dining room next door has an open fireplace that earns its keep in April and October. There's no fixed floor outside, so couples who want to dance on something other than gravel hire one.

Catering runs through a short list of caterers the estate works with, though you're free to bring your own, and there's a kitchen built for exactly that. A private chef can be booked for the rest of the stay, with menus agreed in advance. Vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free menus are all offered, and you can bring your own cake with no surcharge. What makes the food specific here is the farm underneath it: the wine is Petrolo's own, organic since 2016, and the oil comes from around 3,000 olive trees on these slopes.

The four-night minimum stops feeling like a condition once you see it as the shape of the thing. Most couples spread out: a welcome dinner on the terrace, a cellar tasting, a slow afternoon at the pool, a farewell lunch under the pergola. The estate's manager helps set the running order, and the villa's own dining room seats a smaller group indoors when the evening cools. That stretched-out week is what makes destination weddings across Italy worth the flights.

You take the whole place, and only one event runs a day. There's no hotel operation alongside you, no second party in the garden, no strangers at the pool. The villa is let to one group at a time, and the hill it stands on belongs to the estate, screened by holm oak and cypress on three sides. Your nearest neighbors are a parish church and a medieval tower, and neither of them stays up late.