Borgo Santo Pietro wedding photography

Borgo Santo Pietro sits in the hills near Chiusdino, south-west of Siena, on an estate of some hundred and eighty hectares. The house dates to the thirteenth century and the property is a working farm as well as a hotel: vegetable gardens, orchards, livestock and a dairy alongside formal gardens laid out around the buildings. Both halves are in use, which is unusual and which is what gives the place its range.

For photography that range is the asset. Within a short walk there is clipped box hedging, statuary and a still pool on one side, and open field, olive and working farmland on the other. A set made here does not have to repeat itself, and the change of register between formal garden and farm reads as one place rather than as two locations stitched together.

The estate is remote enough that guests generally stay on it, which changes the shape of a wedding — a welcome dinner the night before and a long, unhurried day after it, rather than a single compressed event. Tuscan light in the high season is long and low at the ends of the day and very hard in the middle, so the timeline should push the ceremony late and let the golden hour do the work it does better here than almost anywhere.