Eat,
sleep and party’: a taste of La Dolce Vita aboard Italy’s Orient Express
Replica of
world-famous train aimed at reviving glamour of the classic version makes debut
journey from Rome
Angela
Giuffrida in Rome
Sat 5 Apr
2025 09.00 BST
A replica of
the world-famous Orient Express made its debut journey from Rome on Friday,
transporting well-heeled passengers into the heart of Tuscany’s wine region.
La Dolce
Vita Orient Express, the first Italian-made luxury train, is aimed at reviving
the glamour of the classic version as well as the romanticised notion of
Italy’s dolce vita, or “sweet life”, all the while promoting slow tourism.
The train,
the first of a fleet of six, is made up of 12 refurbished carriages that once
chugged along Italian rail tracks in the 1960s and which have been decked out
with 18 suites, 12 deluxe cabins, a bar, a lounge and a restaurant serving
haute cuisine by the Michelin-starred chef Heinz Beck.
A
collaboration between Orient Express; Arsenale, an Italian hospitality company;
and Italy’s state railways, Ferrovie dello Stato, the maiden voyage, which
involves an overnight route called “tastes of Tuscan vineyards”, left Rome’s
Ostiense station at about midday.
Rather than
having to mingle with longsuffering commuters, deal with any delays or make do
with an espresso and a soggy sandwich from the station’s bar, passengers began
their experience in the opulent Dolce Vita lounge, strategically located on the
station platform from where their train departed.
The
itinerary is one of eight that collectively cover 14 Italian regions, from
Veneto and Liguria in the north to Basilicata and Sicily in the south. On
Friday afternoon passengers travelled along the coast, passing the seaside
towns of Santa Severa and Santa Marinella before gliding through the
countryside of Tuscan, where by early evening they could sip locally made
Brunello wine as part of the aperitivo. As an option, they could disembark and
be taken to the hilltop town of Montalcino before returning to the Dolce Vita
for their evening meal and entertainment. The train, which also passes through
Florence and Pisa, completes its loop back to Rome on Saturday morning.
“You eat,
you sleep, and you party on board,” said Paolo Barletta, who dreamed up the
idea for an experience that combines slow tourism with Italy’s landscape and
its diverse regional cuisine. “It’s kind of like the experience of a cruise
ship, but instead of being a boat cruise it’s a rail cruise.”
The first
trip sold out, with 38 passengers partaking. Trips are also fully booked for
the rest of April and most of May, with itineraries involving Venice,
Portofino, Matera, the Unesco-listed town in Basilicata known for its ancient
cave dwellings, and Sicily. On a trip scheduled in November, passengers can
explore the Monferrato truffle region in Piedmont, while tasting said truffles
and drinking barolo wine.
The vast
majority of those who have booked so far are Americans, followed by Europeans
and visitors from the Middle East. Needless to say, a voyage on the Dolce Vita
does not come cheap, with prices starting at €3,500 (£2,982).
‘A rail
cruise’: the itinerary covers 14 Italian regions, from Veneto and Liguria in
the north to Basilicata and Sicily in the south. A voyage starts at €3,500
(£2,982). Photograph: Patrick Locqueneux
By
comparison, a one-way trip from Rome to Pisa, on a standard Italian fast train
will cost about €45 (£38), even cheaper if you book early. For those wanting to
replicate the Dolce Vita feeling, the onboard bar sells half-bottles of
prosecco for €12 (£10).
Barletta
said the Dolce Vita experience is not just the preserve of the super-rich. “A
lot of people are booking for the one-time experience,” he said. “Perhaps they
are retired and want to spend some of their retirement savings doing something
special, or it is an anniversary or they are celebrating a wedding. It’s not
only about experiencing the train … people really want to see Italy, and in a
slow, relaxed way. The Dolce Vita won’t just take them to famous places like
Venice, but also areas that are less well-known, for example Abruzzo.”
A train from
the UK to Italy? We’ve heard that one before, but I’m on board
Jonn Elledge
It’s a lot
easier to tease new cross-Channel rail services than it is to actually start
running trains. I’m crossing my fingers anyway
Tue 15 Apr
2025 03.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/15/train-uk-to-italy-cross-channel-services
Between
environmental breakdown, economic crisis and Donald Trump, it often feels like
there’s precious little reason to feel hopeful these days. So how’s this for a
reason to cheer up: Italian state railway company, Trenitalia, is planning to
run trains through the Channel tunnel before the decade is out. It’s studying
the option of direct trains from the UK to Italy, too. Eagle-eyed readers may
note that those are two separate propositions.
Trenitalia
is no stranger to the British rail network: it already operates the C2C
franchise, which connects London Fenchurch Street via south Essex to Southend.
Last week the company announced a €1bn (£860m) plan to launch a new high-speed
service connecting London and Paris by 2029, as a direct competitor to the
long-established Eurostar. In addition, it’s reported to be “studying the
possibility” of extending the route, to Lyon, Marseille and Milan, which could
be reached by train from London in eight hours. (Trenitalia already runs from
Milan to Paris in just over seven hours.)
If some of
this sounds a little bit familiar, that’s because we’ve heard it before. Train
operators are increasingly vying for ownership of new, and potentially
lucrative, routes across Europe. Last month, Richard Branson’s Virgin group
announced it was trying to raise £700m to fund a “high-frequency” new
cross-Channel route. Switzerland’s SBB, a Dutch startup named Heuro, a British
one named Gemini and Spain’s Evolyn (which now seems to have teamed up with the
Italians) have all expressed an interest, too. There have been days when I’ve
considered having a go myself, just for the attention.
All of this
sounds like good news for consumers. And it still might be. But it’s a lot
easier to announce a new cross-Channel service than to actually start running
any trains. In 2010, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn announced plans to run trains from
London to Brussels, where they’d split, one half going to Amsterdam, the other
to Cologne and Frankfurt. It never happened. Neither did the proposed daily
commuter stopping service from London to Lille – a pity, since it might have
dealt with the absurd situation in which London’s Stratford International
station has never seen a train going further than Kent.
If anything,
route options through the tunnel have actually declined. For several years, you
could get Eurostar trains direct from London to Lyon, Avignon and Marseille: it
felt like the supreme achievement of civilisation to be able to board a train
on a drizzly Euston Road and get off in sight of the Med. That route stopped
running during the pandemic, apparently never to return.
Why is it so
hard? The problem is neither, as one might assume, platform capacity at St
Pancras International, nor space in the tunnel: both could accommodate more
trains. There are other practical difficulties – a UK shortage of depot space;
a Europe-wide shortage of trains – but these would surely not be barriers to a
really committed operator, either. The Office of Rail Regulation says there’s
space for more trains at the Temple Mills depot in Leyton, east London.
(Eurostar says otherwise but, well, it would.) And while there is currently a
lack of 400m trains meeting the stringent fire safety requirements required to
operate through the tunnel, that’s hardly insurmountable: just pair a couple of
200m ones together. Trenitalia, which has a large fleet of trains described as
“almost tunnel-ready”, says it sees no hurdle here.
But the
biggest issue facing these ambitious operators is border policy. Even before
Brexit, the UK was not in the Schengen area, meaning that travelling on
Eurostar required passport checks, which the Home Office insists must be done
before boarding, rather than on board the train or on arrival. Every station
served by cross-Channel trains needs both passport control facilities and
cordoned-off space beyond them; where these do not exist, entire trains’ worth
of passengers have been turfed off to do their paperwork at Lille. The need to
scan luggage for security threats complicates things, too.
All this
also means a bottleneck at St Pancras. There may be space for more trains;
there’s rather less for more passengers, each of whom has to pass through
airport-style security measures before boarding, and even more checks since
Brexit reduced capacity by a third. Trenitalia says that plans to address this
problem are at “an advanced stage”, but it won’t be easy – the station is a
Grade I-listed building. Add in the expense and disruption posed by all those
other problems, and you can see why new services are announced a lot more
frequently than they ever happen.
Perhaps this
time will be different. Access to rolling stock and money make the
Trenitalia/Evolyn tie-up the most plausible competitor so far, with the
possible exception of SBB. (Switzerland has a lot of flights to London and
limited airport capacity.) Eurostar itself is promising expansion, suggesting
it doesn’t think the capacity problems are insurmountable. And there’s
Europe-wide pressure to replace flights with trains.
For now,
though, the most likely outcome here is surely a bit more competition on the
existing routes from London to Paris, Brussels and Lille. That might push
standards up, or ticket prices down, both of which would be good. That, though,
might be as far as things go. Trains to northern Italy – or even southern
France – may be technically feasible, but that doesn’t make them economically
viable. Still, we can hope. After all, we all want a better future.
Jonn Elledge
is an author and former assistant editor of the New Statesman
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