A courtyard,
and a castle
around it
Castello di Badia Berardenga · Siena, Tuscany
May in the Chianti hills: poppies in the fields on the drive up, a ceremony on the lawn with the whole valley behind it, and dinner in a castle courtyard with light falling down all four walls.
Dinner inside
four walls,
under the sky
Berardenga · Siena
Why a courtyard
beats a marquee
A courtyard gives you what a marquee spends a fortune pretending to have: walls that are already beautiful, a ceiling that is the sky, and a light that comes from the building rather than from a rig.
It also fixes the blue hour in place. At Badia the stone goes warm at exactly the moment the sky goes cobalt, and for about twenty minutes the two are the same brightness. That is the frame on this page that everybody remembers.
More in Tuscany
- Venue
- Castello di Badia Berardenga, Siena
- Photography
- Stefano Casati
Photographs by Stefano Casati.
Roses, a fountain,
and a dog in the hall
Castello di Santa Tecla.
Somewhere
like this?