All aboard for all connections

Take your time and travel in old-fashioned luxury aboard the revived Orient Express, advises Rosie Paterson

- Rosie Paterson

ON June 5, 1883, the first Express d’Orient chugged out of Paris in a ceremonial billow of steam, destined for Vienna, via Munich, and forever altering trans-European train travel. By October of the same year, the route was extended to Giurgiu in Romania, with guests whisked across the Danube to Ruse, Bulgaria, and onto another train bound for Varna on Bulgaria’s east coast. The final journey to Istanbul, then still commonly referred to in the West as Constantinople, was completed by ferry. By June 1889, it was possible to traverse Continental Europe, from Paris in the north-west to Constantinople in the south-east, in one fell swoop. Sirkeci railway station served as the locomotive’s terminus in the latter—a pink-tinged Orientalist confection designed by Prussian architect August Jasmund in the late 19th century. It’s still in operation today.

Somewhat confusingly, the Orient Express (as it was renamed in 1891) was not a company, but a service used to describe all manner of routes, including those mentioned above, as well as ones that steamed through Zurich, Innsbruck, Milan, Venice and Athens. It was actually operated by a Belgian firm, the Compagnie Internationale des WagonsLits, whose fictional director Monsieur Bouc is a star character in Agatha Christie’s seminal novel, Murder on the Orient Express.

As well as Christie, the Orient Express has inspired countless other authors, filmmakers and musicians—Bram Stoker, Ian Fleming, Paul Theroux, Michael Palin, Philip Starke—who, combined, have ensured that it has remained synonymous with luxury train travel for 140 years and counting.