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 Orient Express La Dolce Vita 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.
Photo: Mr Tripper
Photo: Alexandre Tabaste
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.