The allure of the Orient Express returns, in a new guise. The icon of luxury and design is ready to write a new chapter of the journey. A vacation that takes us back in time and allows us to discover destinations with a slow, absolutely unique rhythm. Are you ready to board a legend again?
The Legend of the Orient Express Reborn
The Orient Express project was born in 1883 from the vision of Georges Nagelmackers. The train aimed to cross Europe with unmatched elegance and comfort, reaching Constantinople from Paris. With luxury cabins, a refined menu, impeccable staff, and velvet and crystal upholstery, it enchanted the world. The dream, bearing the name Orient Express, revolutionized the luxury travel sector.
Today, at 140 years later, that legend returns to astonish us. Not as a simple revival, but as a true rebirth. At the helm of the project is Sébastien Bazin, CEO of the Accor group who guides the renaissance with a vision that blends past and future, tradition and technology but above all elegance with an eye toward sustainability.
The iconic venue to unveil the new chapter is the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris where, with the exhibition 1925-2025 a century of Art Deco, it provides the backdrop for the exclusive preview of the historic train. Here, past and present meet in an exciting dialogue: the travel heritage meets the modernity of design, in a living and vibrant homage to the French creative genius.
Behind this rebirth is a name you will love to remember: Maxime d’Angeac, architect and artistic director of Orient Express. A visionary, refined, fond of perfect proportions and of the light that sculpts space, d’Angeac imagined the train as a symphony of materials, colors, and shapes.
In 2015, seventeen original carriages from the twenties, believed lost forever, were rediscovered thanks to an incredible historical investigation. Today, those same carriages are coming back to life in the French workshops: not as copies, but as contemporary reinterpretations. More than thirty French master artisans, embroiderers, glassmakers, cabinetmakers, upholsterers, fabric designers, and wood goldsmiths have joined their hands and visions to revive the train’s soul. Every gesture is care; every element is both functional and poetical together.
The World of Orient Express
The journey does not stop on the rails; Orient Express takes a cosmopolitan approach and does so with various types of experiences around the world. The Dolce Vita Express is one of the most recent debuts, dating from 2025, and it traverses stops such as Rome, Venice, Naples, and Sicily. In Rome, the first hotel has even been born that honors Italian elegance, while in 2026 Venice is set to open a second luxury refuge. A real gem? Next year, the first voyage of the Orient Express Corinthian is planned, the largest sailing ship ever built and ready to sail the seas of the world.
And for 2027, the grand return of the historic train is highly anticipated: the iconic Orient Express we all know, but reinvented to captivate new generations of romantic, curious, and demanding travelers.
