Venice Simplon-Orient-Express in Budapest

The first Orient Express never quite reached Constantinople; passengers finished the journey by ferry.

On 4 June 1883, Belgian entrepreneur Georges Nagelmackers launched the Express d'Orient from the Gare de Strasbourg (now Gare de l'Est) in Paris. Operated by his Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, the train ran to Giurgiu in Romania, with passengers completing the final leg to Constantinople by ferry and connecting train. It was the first transcontinental luxury express in Europe. Budapest was on the route from the very beginning. The train passed through the Hungarian capital as it crossed the continent, and Budapest Keleti station became one of its most important stops.

Paris to the Bosphorus, unbroken: 2,740 kilometres of track finally silenced the ferries in 1889.

By 1889, the rail infrastructure had caught up with Nagelmackers' ambition. A direct rail route to Constantinople (Istanbul) was finally complete, eliminating the need for ferry crossings. The Orient Express could now run unbroken from Paris to the Bosphorus, a journey of roughly 2,740 kilometres taking just under three days.

A post-war treaty, not a timetable, drew the Simplon route through the Alps on 11 April 1919.

After the First World War, the Treaty of Versailles mandated a new routing. The Simplon Orient Express was inaugurated on 11 April 1919, running from Paris through the Simplon Tunnel into Italy, then onward through Trieste, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Belgrade, and eventually to Istanbul. This southern route avoided Germany and Austria, reflecting the post-war political landscape. The Simplon route would later lend its name to the modern revival. It also cemented the train's association with Venice, which became a key stop on the line.

Christie boarded the train as a traveller; she left it as its most enduring publicist.

Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express was published in January 1934, drawing on her own experiences aboard the train. Christie had travelled the route multiple times during the late 1920s and early 1930s, and the novel's setting, a snowbound Simplon Orient Express, turned the train into a character in its own right. The novel sealed the Orient Express's place in popular imagination. It has never really left.

Thirty-five carriages rescued from hostels and restaurants, restored to Art Deco splendour. It began with two lots at auction.

By the 1970s, the original Orient Express service was a shadow of its former self, reduced to an ordinary sleeper train. In 1977, American businessman James Sherwood, founder of Sea Containers, attended a Sotheby's auction in Monte Carlo and purchased two of the original Wagons-Lits sleeping cars. It was the start of an obsession. Over the following years, Sherwood tracked down and acquired 35 original carriages from across Europe, finding them in use as everything from a restaurant in Monte Carlo to a youth hostel in Poland. Each was painstakingly restored to its 1920s and 1930s Art Deco glory.

Sixteen million dollars and a one-way ticket proved the world still had a taste for going slowly.

On 25 May 1982, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express departed London Victoria for Venice on its inaugural journey. The service combined the restored Belmond British Pullman for the London to Folkestone leg with the continental Wagons-Lits carriages from Boulogne to Venice. Sherwood had spent $16 million on the restoration, and the result was extraordinary. The train was an immediate sensation. It proved that the appetite for slow, luxurious travel had not disappeared; it had simply been waiting for someone to do it properly.

A rebrand reshapes the company; the train, as ever, remains its finest jewel.

Orient-Express Hotels, the company Sherwood had built around the train, rebranded as Belmond in 2014. The name change reflected the company's expansion into a global portfolio of luxury hotels, trains, and river cruises. The VSOE remained the crown jewel.

Budapest was always on the original route; it simply took a century to return.

Belmond expanded the VSOE's route network to include Budapest as a destination, reconnecting the train with one of the original Orient Express's most important cities. The Budapest service typically runs from London or Paris via Venice, crossing the Alps and the Hungarian plains before arriving in the capital. Budapest is a fitting terminus. The city's grand thermal baths, its Danube-straddling architecture, and its deep culinary traditions reward the kind of traveller who chooses to arrive by train rather than plane.

At $3.2 billion, LVMH made clear the Orient-Express was not a relic to be preserved; it was a trophy to be invested in.

In April 2019, LVMH, the French luxury conglomerate behind Louis Vuitton, Dior, and Moët Hennessy, completed its acquisition of Belmond. The deal valued the company at $3.2 billion and placed the VSOE within the world's largest luxury group. It was a statement of intent: the train's future was secure, and investment would follow.

After 142 years, the Orient Express still has new carriages to unveil and new routes to seduce.

The VSOE continues to operate seasonal services to Budapest, alongside its classic London to Venice route and journeys to Paris, Prague, Vienna, and Istanbul. Under LVMH's stewardship, the train has seen the introduction of new Grand Suites and continued restoration of its historic carriages. Meanwhile, Accor's Orient Express brand is developing a new luxury train, La Dolce Vita, for Italian routes, ensuring the Orient Express name will echo through European rail for decades to come.