It’s a balmy but breezy morning on the Ligurian coastline, and I’m gazing out of the window as I sip a freshly brewed Italian coffee. Through the glass, I can hear the muffled squall of seagulls. If I strain my ear hard enough, the hollow clacking sound of thousands of smooth stones rolling over one another as the waves advance and recede. From my perch directly overlooking the sea, I see striped umbrellas on a beach in the near distance, the first sunbathers of the day beginning to cluster underneath them and tentatively dip their toes in the turquoise waters. Then, my bed judders forward, and I hear the gentle screech of metal and metal. No, it isn’t an earthquake; and no, my bedroom isn’t about to tumble down into the Tyrrhenian Sea. It’s 8 a.m. on the La Dolce Vita Orient Express train, and we have less than two hours to reach Santa Margherita Ligure station. So, as the Italians would say: andiamo.
To rewind a little: Ever since developing an obsession with Agatha Christie as a teenager, I’ve always been fascinated by the glamour and mystique of a fancy sleeper train. And over the past few years, the options for spending a night on the rails in the lap of luxury have grown more varied (though, admittedly, pricey) than ever—from Peru to Penang, and Cornwall to Cape Town, the possibilities are endless. Which is why, when Orient Express returned to the scene last year (the rights to the name were purchased by Accor in 2017, and work on the new fleet of trains has been underway for nearly a decade), the goal was to do things a little differently. Sure, the brand is still tapping into the nostalgia factor—but instead of harking back to the 1920s and ’30s heyday of high-end rail travel, they’re instead looking to another, equally fabulous, chapter in Italian history: la dolce vita. (The clue’s in the name, I guess.)
They’re also thinking bigger than just trains. My journey began, in fact, with two nights at Orient Express La Minerva, a ravishing new Roman hotel quite literally steps from the Pantheon, directly in front of Bernini’s iconic elephant and obelisk statue in the Piazza della Minerva. Set inside a 17th-century former noble residence, the building has been a hotel since 1811—a grand, if slightly dusty, fixture of the Roman hospitality circuit—before having the cobwebs blown off courtesy of a four-year renovation overseen by the French-Mexican architect and designer Hugo Toro.
The results, I’m relieved to say, are spectacular. After being greeted by the liveried doorman and collecting my keys from the sleek Art Deco reception area—all brass and marble and gleaming walnut surfaces—it was through to the winter garden-style courtyard at the center of the building, which lays serious claim to being the most gorgeous hotel lobby in all of Rome: under a conservatory-style glass ceiling, enormous potted palms frame a scalloped bar carved from travertine marble sitting directly in front of a classical statue of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, justice, law, and victory. (Not a bad lineup.) Then, I was whisked up to one of the hotel’s signature suites: the Stendhal, named after the legendary French writer who was a regular at the hotel all the way back in the early 19th century.
Naturally, it’s a showstopper: if you can peel your eyes away from the vaulted ceilings which are decorated with meticulously restored frescoes, you can stop to admire the custom furniture—the curved velvet sofa that servers as the living room centerpiece is a doozy—or head to the bathroom, where the walls and floors are clad in a fleshy Rosso Verona marble, and the freestanding bathtub will call your name after a long day pounding the cobblestoned pavements of the Eternal City.
Where many of the other luxury hotel brands putting down roots in Rome over the past few years have brought their identikit design styles to bear on the properties they’ve taken over, Orient Express has taken an entirely different tack, fostering a vibe that is sympathetic to the building it’s occupying and that communicates a profound sense of place. And it is, for my money, the most stylish hotel in all of Rome. (Also one of the buzziest, too, thanks to the rooftop restaurant Gigi Rigolatto, where you can feast on lobster linguine and cotoletta alla Milanese while watching the sun dip behind the cupola of the Pantheon next door, as I did on my final night in the city.)
Which leads us to the main event: the train. The journey began at Roma Ostiense station—a rationalist architectural marvel from the Mussolini era, with all of the dubious history that entails—where Orient Express has taken over a wing of the station and artfully refurbished it to serve as an aesthetic portal between the world of La Minerva and the world of La Dolce Vita train: as silver trays of bellinis and stuzzichini were passed around, and a lively jazz band struck up beneath the shiny Aperol orange ceiling, guests—mostly couples on a romantic getaway—arrived to settle on the plush red velvet banquettes or mingle by the floor-to-ceiling walnut bookshelves. (A train journey like this also means you get the joy of scoping out your fellow travelers for the next few days and guessing their backstories, like an episode of The White Lotus without the murders.)
Then, it was off to settle into our cabins and begin our odyssey: our first day would see us snake along the coastline of the west of Italy, then zip across the thigh of Italy’s boot to Venice, before zipping back across overnight to Portofino, then returning to Rome on the morning of the third day. The jewel box of a cabin was, as you might have guessed by now, a wunderkammer of fabulous design details: overseen by the cult-favorite design firm Dimorestudio, it’s like stepping into a miniature version of a mid-century Milanese apartment, with lacquered terracotta ceilings, velvety Alcantara walls, and groovy retro prints.
Behind a wall of mirrored smoked glass lies the bathroom, which, despite its modest proportions, is surprisingly spacious—and once again, very stylishly appointed, with sinks surrounded by a prosciutto-y marble and an impressively forceful water pressure in the showers. As I sank onto my bed and watched the low, undulating hills of Emilia Romagna glide past my window, it all began to feel very la dolce vita indeed.
But before I knew it, it was 6 p.m., and we were pulling into Venice’s Santa Lucia station (another slice of terrific 1940s design—the Italians really do a train station well). Stepping out into the chaos of the platform, myself and a handful of other guests were swiftly guided to a jetty and onto a water taxi for a whistle-stop tour of the city: aperitivo at Caffé Florian among the pigeons of St. Mark’s Square, a feast of a dinner (squid ink spaghetti, carpaccio di manzo, the works) at Harry’s Bar, and then on for a truly magical private tour of Palazzo Fortuny. (The former home of Mario Fortuny, this treasure trove of stage sets, murals, antique books, and pleated fashions is one of Venice’s most fascinating and often overlooked museums.)
By the time we’d hopped in a water taxi and weaved our way back to the station, I was frankly too exhausted to join the festivities that were kicking off in the bar car with its harlequin-patterned walls and zig-zag sofas—but I did make sure to pop my head in to take in the scene, where the majority of the train’s patrons were clinking chilled Champagne flutes in suits and gowns (one of the choose-your-own-adventure options for the evening out in Venice was a lavish dinner in a private palazzo) and beginning to shimmy to a live piano player plinking out renditions of “Volare” and “Tu vuò fa’ l’americano.” However jolly it appeared, it was time for bed.
After all, I was to have an early start: after a hearty breakfast of flaky cornetti with Amalfi lemon marmalade, a perfectly pulled espresso, and poached eggs (I skipped the shavings of black truffle on top, but that was an option), we were arriving at Santa Margherita Ligure, and it was time to whizz around the shores of Portofino and Camogli on a speedboat. Bundling off the train with the same gang as my Venice outing and down to the harbor, we first stopped for a dip in the gin-clear waters of a grotto before making a beeline for San Fruttuoso, the picture-postcard bay accessible only by the water with a 10th-century Benedictine monastery overlooking a slice of pebbled beach. On the third-floor terrace of the Da Giovanni restaurant, over plates of homemade lasagna sheets slathered with fresh pesto and a heaving platter of fritto misto, we watched families and groups of young Italians spill out from the water buses from Camogli and splash around in the shallow waves, with the general consensus being: it really doesn’t get much better than this.
Once back on the train a few hours later, it began to dawn on me that it was, in a heartbreaking turn of events, the final night of my journey. After slipping into my suit (top tip: hang your evening outfit in the bathroom while taking a pre-dinner shower to steam out the creases), it was off to the dining cart for a typically decadent meal of tuna carpaccio, silky spaghetti with scorpionfish, and an olive-crusted lamb chop. Overseen by Chef Jean Imbert, each menu is inspired by the itinerary you’re traveling on—other journeys will take you to Sicily, Tuscany, and Abruzzo—as well as the season, and is served alongside an extensive wine list, though I was more than happy with a mocktail of fresh peach juice and soda water. Stuffed to the brim and very much satisfied, I retired to my room and dozed off to the surprisingly soothing rhythm of the carriage tottering over the rails.
The next morning, it only felt right to take breakfast in bed, so as to enjoy the novelty of watching the world go by from under my sheets one last time, before packing and having my suitcase spirited away to be collected at the station upon arrival. (I’m not sure how I haven’t mentioned it yet, but the service was, from beginning to end, impeccable. Despite only being up and running for a matter of months when I joined, any teething problems had clearly been ironed out already, and it was all the more astonishing when considering our journey was being made on a busy national rail network. The logistics of it boggle the mind.)
After disembarking and heading back into the waiting room, goodbyes were being shared among the guests, many of whom had clearly struck up fast friendships over late-night negronis. And soon, I was heading back to the airport, already ruefully thinking ahead to the following morning, when I’d be waking up with a view of my London apartment instead of a sweeping landscape of rolling hills and cypress trees. The only silver lining? In 2026, Orient Express will be opening their next hotel in Venice, with work currently underway to transform the 15th-century Palazzo Donà Giovannelli into another design gem. Sounds like an excellent excuse to return.
