Filming Micah and Rafael's wedding at Villa Rusconi Clerici
Villa Rusconi Clerici stands in Pallanza, the old lakeside quarter of Verbania, on the Piedmontese shore of Lake Maggiore. Its garden runs down to a private jetty, and everything in front of it, open water, the Borromean Islands, the mountains behind them, is the view the whole property is built around. We filmed Micah and Rafael’s wedding here. Around seventy guests, a bride from the Philippines, a groom from Brazil, and family flying in from both sides of the world to a villa in northern Italy neither side had seen before. The ceremony took place a few steps from the water, the afternoon moved out onto the lake on a classic wooden boat, and the dancing lasted long enough that the film ended up being as much about the party as the vows.
The villa Netflix chose, and a real wedding in the same garden
If Villa Rusconi Clerici looks familiar, there is a reason. In September 2026 Netflix released the second season of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, which moves the story from the English countryside to the Italian lakes. Lake Maggiore carries most of that season, and Villa Rusconi Clerici was used as one of its principal locations. The production even built a temporary pier in front of the garden so characters could arrive by speedboat. The rest of the season’s Italian scenes stay close by. A few streets away in Pallanza, the Grand Hotel Majestic appears in the show, and the Chiesa di San Leonardo stands in for the ceremony church. There is a small irony in this that we enjoy. A production spent weeks staging a fictional wedding across Pallanza, on a set of locations couples have been quietly booking for real weddings for years. Micah and Rafael’s day happened in the same garden, with a real boat, a real jetty, and no set dressing at all. For couples researching the villa now, the practical effect is worth knowing. Screen exposure raises a venue’s profile fast, and dates at properties this size get taken earlier than couples expect.
What the villa actually is
The house you see today is not the original. In the 1860s the plot held a much smaller villa, home for a time to Stefano Turr, a Hungarian officer who deserted the Austrian army, fought with Garibaldi’s Thousand, married one of Napoleon’s granddaughters, and later directed the building of the Corinth Canal. The oldest known photograph of the estate dates to 1857. At the end of the nineteenth century that first house was demolished and replaced by the present villa, a large eclectic building with neo-baroque detailing, built for the Biffi family. There is a nice piece of local lore attached to its proportions. Both Ferdinando Biffi and his son stood over six foot six, and the scale of the rooms is said to have been set to suit them. Inside, most of it survives intact. The hall is dark, cool and wood panelled, a deliberate contrast with the glare off the water outside. It opens into the grand drawing room, with the tea room and the study leading off it, and on the other side a dining room with an enormous walnut fireplace. Off the drawing room is the winter garden, a rare rocaille walled conservatory closer to a French orangerie than anything else on the lake. The main staircase runs almost the full height of the house to a coffered painted ceiling. On bright afternoons the water throws moving light across that ceiling, which is the kind of thing you cannot plan for and always try to catch. The garden was laid out in the English manner and planted with camellias, azaleas, rhododendrons and magnolias, most likely from the Rovelli nursery three hundred metres up the road, the same family of gardeners who turned Isola Madre into the botanical garden it is today. An imposing flight of steps flanked by two eighteenth century marble lions leads up from the lawn to the terrace. The villa has had a longer and stranger life than its calm garden suggests. In the Belle Epoque it hosted the Troubetzkoy brothers and the painters working around the lake at the time. During the Second World War its ground floor drawing room was used as a Gestapo headquarters. The Biffi family were succeeded by the Counts Rusconi-Clerici, who still hold it. Directly offshore lies the small island of San Giovanni, where Arturo Toscanini lived after the war.
How the day works here
The property is unusually well organised for a wedding, and the layout does a lot of the work. Arriving by water. The villa has its own jetty, and the approach from the lake, past the Borromean Islands with the house growing larger as you come in, is the single best entrance the property offers. If you want one cinematic sequence out of your day, this is it. Ceremony by the lake. A lawn framed by roses and azaleas runs along the water, bordered by a lakeside walk set with stone flower pots. Micah and Rafael married here, close enough that the water is in frame behind them for the whole ceremony. It also means guests are looking at the islands throughout, which is not nothing when your family has travelled a long way to be there. Aperitivo on the lawn, dinner in the pavilion. In the middle of the garden, where the old tennis court was, stands a wrought iron pavilion built in the manner of a late nineteenth century greenhouse. Its lake facing side is a single enormous window, so dinner is eaten with the gulf in view. It is built in five modules of fifteen by five metres and can be partitioned to 150, 225 or 300 square metres, seating from around fifty to two hundred guests. Warm evenings it opens to the garden, cool or windy ones it closes and heats. A covered gallery between villa and pavilion. Small detail, enormous in practice. A rain shower does not turn into a scramble, and guests move between house and dinner without breaking the flow of the evening. From a filming point of view an unbroken evening is worth more than any single set-up. The ground floor is yours. Portico, great hall, staircase, dining room, drawing room, study, tea room and winter garden are all open to guests, which gives a wedding real range indoors. Late night in the cellars. The party can carry on downstairs in the old cellars and kitchens, where a midnight plate of pizza or spaghetti comes out of the original bread oven. This is one of our favourite parts of the villa to film. Everyone is tired, nobody is performing, the light is low and warm, and it produces the sort of footage a couple actually watches over and over.
What it looks like on film
The garden and pavilion both face the Borromean Gulf, so the light that matters here arrives across open water rather than raking down a hillside. Toward sunset the backdrop of lake, islands and mountains shifts colour without any help, and the pavilion’s glass side picks it up directly, meaning the dinner room lights itself for the last part of the evening. That orientation also changes how the day is shot compared with Lake Como. On Como the shores are steep and close, and light gets cut off early by the mountains behind. The Borromean Gulf is wide and open, so the evening holds longer and the horizon stays visible. Boats matter here too. A wooden launch out on that water, with the islands as background, gives a sequence with real depth in it, which is exactly what Micah and Rafael’s afternoon on the lake produced. The one thing to plan around is the middle of the day. On a bright summer afternoon the lawn is fully exposed. We generally build coverage so the most important portrait time falls in the last two hours before sunset, and use the terrace, the portico and the winter garden for the harder light earlier on. Seasonally the garden gives you something different every month. Camellias from late February, then mimosa, then azaleas and rhododendrons in spring, with roses and hydrangeas running to late autumn, and citrus in the old lemon house.
Villa Rusconi Clerici for an international wedding
Micah and Rafael’s guest list came in from several continents, which is worth mentioning because Lake Maggiore handles this well. Milan Malpensa is under an hour away by road, closer than most Lake Como venues, so guests land and arrive the same afternoon rather than losing a day. Verbania and Pallanza also give you a real town rather than a strip of hotels. Guests can walk to dinner, the lake ferries run to the islands, and Villa Taranto’s botanical gardens are a short distance away for anyone spending extra days. For a wedding where half the guests are seeing Italy for the first time, that ease matters more than couples expect at the planning stage. Planning a wedding at Villa Rusconi Clerici or elsewhere on Lake Maggiore? Get in touch and we will talk through timing, light and boat logistics from direct experience of the property.
