There are faster ways to get from Paris to Venice. Planes do it with the emotional subtlety of a stapler.
Cars try their best but end up sulking in traffic somewhere near Milan. Trains, though, proper trains, understand something about the business of travel that everyone else seems to have forgotten. Namely, that the journey matters.
That’s why the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express has always felt less like transport and more like a polite refusal to rush. Now one of the world’s most iconic trains has gone one step further and revealed something called L’Observatoire, a sleeper carriage designed by the artist JR. An entire carriage. Designed by one person. That alone should make you sit up straight.
This is, apparently, the first time an artist has been given the keys to a whole carriage and told to do whatever they like. That’s a dangerous thing to say to an artist, but in this case it’s worked. L’Observatoire isn’t loud. It doesn’t shout about itself. It waits for you to notice things, which is far more civilised.
JR has teamed up with Atelier Philippe Allemand, who know the train rather well, having been involved with it since the late 1990s. Together they’ve reworked the marquetry so that it tells a story. One of those stories includes an urban skyline and JR himself standing on a rooftop, surveying the city like a thoughtful pigeon. It’s a reminder that his usual canvas is the street, not a walnut panel travelling at a dignified pace through Europe.
The idea, we’re told, is that L’Observatoire is an artwork in motion. That sounds like marketing, but here it’s accurate. It’s also a tribute to the old crafts that made these trains magical in the first place. Nothing feels sprayed on. Everything feels considered, touched by human hands, and then left alone.
The inspiration comes from astronomical observatories and those Renaissance cabinets of curiosities that were essentially very classy ways of saying, “Look at this odd thing I found.” The carriage mirrors JR’s Paris studio, complete with personal objects and keepsakes. You’re not just staying somewhere; you’re rummaging, politely, through someone’s mind.
Space helps. This is the largest and most exclusive accommodation on the train, and it unfolds across the entire carriage like a well-planned thought. There are lounges that encourage you to sit down properly, not perch. There’s a rhythm to the place that matches the rails beneath you.
You can have breakfast in bed, which always sounds decadent until you realise it’s just eggs and toast taken seriously. Evenings can be scored to vinyl, which immediately improves them. Music sounds better when it’s physical. It has weight. Like the train itself.
There’s a bedroom with a free-standing bathtub, which is the sort of thing you’d normally giggle when you’re talking about it.. until you’re actually in it, watching the countryside slide past you, while steam curls up around the train. Then you stop arguing.
A library appears when you need it. A hidden Tea Room waits patiently, filled with miniature trains, which is either whimsical or deeply dangerous depending on your disposition.
There are also Oculi skylights in this fabulous carriage (modelled on camera lenses), that let you look up at the stars, assuming you’ve stayed awake long enough. Green leather scalloping and stained glass give parts of the carriage a gently arboreal feel, as if you’re travelling through a forest that happens to have wheels.
The stained glass, designed by Michael Mayer, drifts into surreal landscapes as well. The bathtub area has leaf patterns that make bathing feel faintly botanical. None of it feels forced. It’s more like a series of quiet suggestions.
Gary Franklin, VP of Trains & Cruises at Belmond, describes the carriage as a unique blend of art, luxury, and immersive storytelling. He’s right – though I’d add something else: patience. This is a place designed for people who understand that getting from point A to point B as fast as possible is overrated.
L’Observatoire doesn’t try to impress you in the first five minutes. It knows you’ll be there a while. And so it settles in, just as you do, and reminds you that travelling slowly isn’t a compromise. It’s the whole point.
