THE WORLD’S BEST — #005 | VENICE SIMPLON-ORIENT-EXPRESS

There are journeys that take you to a destination, and there are journeys in which the act of travelling becomes the destination itself. The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, A Belmond Train, belongs to that almost vanished category in which travel once again becomes an event. Its historic carriages, built between the 1920s and 1940s and painstakingly restored, retain marquetry, lacquerwork, glass, textiles and Art Deco details from the golden age of European rail travel. The train as we know it today emerged from entrepreneur James Sherwood’s vision to rediscover and restore former Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits carriages in the late 1970s, eventually returning them to the rails in 1982. Since then, crossing Europe aboard them has evolved from transportation into one of the great contemporary rituals of travel.

What makes the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express exceptional is that it does not reproduce the past as a theatrical set. The past remains physically present. Guests move through historic dining cars, dine among lacquered panels and René Lalique details, listen to piano music in Bar Car 3674 and sleep surrounded by woods restored by craftspeople capable of preserving techniques that have almost disappeared. Today, historic cabins coexist with suites, six Grand Suites inspired by great European cities and one creation that has taken the concept considerably further: L’Observatoire, an entire carriage conceived by French artist JR. Joining the train in March 2025, it became the first onboard residence designed by an artist, transforming historic Sleeping Car 3553 into a habitable artwork incorporating a bedroom, freestanding bathtub, marble bathroom, lounge, library, record player, narrative marquetry, circular skylights and a secret tearoom concealed behind the library.

Yet the train’s greatest luxury is not merely what it contains, but the radically different relationship it creates with time. For decades, transportation has been obsessed with eliminating minutes. The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express creates value from precisely what the modern world attempts to remove: anticipation, conversation, dressing for dinner, watching the Alps from a window, drinking champagne without checking the time, waking as the landscape changes and discovering that arriving more slowly can be infinitely more extraordinary. Turning time itself into something scarce may be one of the most sophisticated expressions of contemporary ultra luxury.

This is why the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express deserves its place in the LUXONOMY Atlas of Excellence — 30th Anniversary Edition 2027. Few names achieve what it does: preserving genuine heritage without turning it into a museum, while allowing artists, craftspeople, designers, chefs and new generations to continue writing its story. L’Observatoire proves that preservation does not require immobility. The future of ultra luxury will increasingly belong to experiences that cannot be accelerated, digitised or reproduced at scale. In that future, this train is not a relic. It is a statement.