Wonderful locations for a special wedding in Tuscany

Your wedding day is one of the most important days in your life, so every little detail must be considered and organized. Here's something about the locations in Tuscany for a fairytale wedding. Tuscany offers a wide range of options for all tastes and budgets to make your wedding really unforgettable. For this reason we decided to write down some of the unique locations, thanks to the suggestions of the Florentine wedding planner and blogger Simona Cappitelli.

Florence and surroundings

In Florence you can have both a civil and religious wedding. Civil weddings in Florence are performed by an Italian official in many locations and last less than half an hour. The Italian government requires certain basic and traditional wedding vows to be exchanged and some articles from the Italian law to be read. Some locations:

Palazzo Vecchio
One of the best locations to get married in Florence is the Palazzo Vecchio. Here you can get married in the “Red Room”, “Lorenzo’s Room” and in the Salone de' Cinquecento. The Palazzo Vecchio is one of the busiest places where you can get married in Italy, so reserve as far ahead of time as possible. 

Bardini Museum (Via de' Renai, n. 37)
The Bardini Museum opened to the public again after lengthy restoration work aimed at restoring the layout that its founder, the antiquarian Stefano Bardini, had originally given the exhibition. The building is remarkable and the collection includes sculptures, paintings, furniture pieces, ceramic pieces, tapestries and more.

Rose Garden (Viale G. Poggi, n. 2)
Twice a month from May to September (August excluded) you can get married here in one of the most romantic places in the whole of Florence. The garden is home to a vast assortment of roses and countless other types of plants, and is also known for the permanent exhibit of sculptures by the Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon.

Villa Vogel (Via delle Torri, n. 23)
The Swiss Vogel family, who owned it since the beginning of the twentieth century, donated it to the city of Florence. The park has become a huge garden and inside the building there are administrative offices.

Other places that deserve a mention in this post are Florence’s terraces. For example, the terrace of the Hotel Continentale in Vicolo dell'Oro or the Hotel Antica Torre Tornabuoni in Via Tornabuoni can be used for a wedding lunch or dinner and blessings can be held here, too.

An original place to get married is in a greenhouse and Florence has two of them: one is the Horticultural Gardens in via Bolognese and the another is a private greenhouse in the Torrigiani Gardens in via dei Serragli.

Near Florence there is the wonderful frescoed Oratory of Saint Catherine in Bagno a Ripoli. Once it was a church and now it is deconsecrated, yet completely restored and managed by the municipality: it’s perfect for civil weddings.

Pisa and surroundings Giardino Scotto in Pisa

Called "new" to distinguish it from the older Citadel of Pisa, it is located on the opposite side of Pisa’s city walls in lungarno Fibonacci on the south bank of the River Arno, between the bridges Ponte della Fortezza and Ponte della Vittoria. It was built starting from 1440 during the first Florentine domination. The fort was damaged and later restored by the Florentine architect Giuliano da Sangallo. At the heart of the ramparts of the fort of the New Citadel there is a large garden built in the early nineteenth century, where civil weddings can be celebrated.

San Zeno Abbey 
The Abbey is located near piazza Santa Caterina, in a place where you can find many remains of Ancient Roman Pisa. At first it was a Benedictine abbey, then it was annexed to a monastery of the Order of Camaldoli. At the beginning of the fifteenth century it had profound transformations. The building - probably built before 1000 AC on a pre-existing pagan temple - is characterized by a layered set of different architectural styles and orientations, as can be seen in the façade. Civil weddings can be celebrated here.

Villa di Corliano
The Villa Agostini della Seta of Corliano is a fifteenth-century villa decorated with mural art dating to the 1500s, typical of Florentine mannerist art. The interior contains frescoes from the 16th and 18th centuries. Villa Agostini is part of a larger monumental complex consisting of a chapel, a farmhouse, an oil mill, a “kaffeehaus” and a park of about 3 hectares with age-old plants enclosed within the villa’s walls. It is possible to rent the Gentile chapel to celebrate a civil or religious marriage within the villa.

Versilia area Lido di Camaiore’s Pier

This is a truly evocative place in Versilia, where you can get married on the pier, flowing into the sea with the wonderful scene of the Apuan Alps behind.

Teatro dell’Olivo in Camaiore
The building dates to 1500 and, since 1649, it has been used as a theatre. Starting from 1720, the stage was built as well as the stands. After various events, the theatre was reopened to citizens in 2003 and, as from 2012, weddings have been celebrated here.

Villa Orlando in Torre del Lago
Villa Orlando was built in 1869 in the new Gothic style. It is a hunting lodge on the banks of Lake Massaciuccoli. The surrounding property covers about 40,000 square meters, mainly covered by pine trees and oaks. It includes 150 meters of private lake front and the boat house. It is a very secluded and quiet location, sheltered away from the public. Civil weddings can be organized in the villa.

By the sea, Centro Laugier in Portoferraio, Elba Island

Located in the historic centre of Portoferraio, it can be reached through the Salita Napoleone, a long and characteristic staircase of pink stone. Built under Cosimo I de' Medici in the mid 1500s, it was the seat of the Order of the Knights of St. Stephen and later named by Cesare De Laugier, a Napoleonic officer whose mother was from Portoferraio.