A three-night carriage from the Gare de l'Est down to a cliff above the Tyrrhenian. The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express turns south for the first time this summer, and stops at Pompeii on the way.
The train has had Paris on one end and Venice on the other since 1982. On 4 May 2026 it pulled away from the platform in another direction. Three nights to the carriages, the second morning at Pompeii, the last leg by car up the coast to Ravello. The route runs through the summer.
Belmond is bundling it with a stay at Caruso, the brand's hotel in Ravello. One reservation covers the train, the transfers and the rooms. The fare reads as a single line, Paris to Ravello.
The route
Departure is from the Gare de l'Est in the afternoon. The train runs through Champagne and the Vosges overnight, crosses the Mont Cenis at first light, and threads down the spine of the Apennines through the second day. A long station call at Pompeii follows. It is the first time the Orient-Express has stopped at the site.
Passengers leave the carriages at Salerno, then transfer by car to Ravello. Caruso sits at 365 metres above the coast, on the ridge that runs from Amalfi through Atrani. The drive is the moment the journey lands.
The hotel
The building is an eleventh-century palace, the old Palazzo d'Afflitto. Belmond restored it as a hotel in 2010 and has held it lightly since. Frescoed vaults, vaulted loggias, a long terrace with the infinity pool that runs out toward the bay.
Il Pantaleone at Caruso, A Belmond Hotel, Ravello · Courtesy of Belmond
This season the hotel opened a restaurant. Il Pantaleone, in the old Belvedere room, runs on a programme that Executive Chef Armando Aristarco calls Antiqua Cucina Nova. Langoustine with Neapolitan papaccelle peppers. A Neapolitan ragout taken at its slowest setting. Roasted pink lamb from the Lattari Mountains. The cellar leans on the Campania reds.
A second room, Adagio, opened next to it. Eighteenth-century frescoes overhead, ochre-veined marble tables, a low-lit bar with a list that holds zero-proof serves alongside the champagnes. The room reads as the bar of the palace it once was.
The train still leaves Paris at the same hour. The line now bends an extra five hundred miles south, and the last view is the bay of Salerno.
The Splendid EditThe season
Caruso holds fifty rooms and suites. The hotel's own gardens climb the ridge in formal terraces, with lemon trees and a herb garden the kitchens draw from. A boat sits at the dock at Amalfi for guests who want to read the coast from the water rather than from above.
The Paris to Amalfi service is one of three new Italian itineraries the train is running this year, the others ending at Villa San Michele in Florence and Hotel Cipriani in Venice. Splendido in Portofino returns to the calendar as well. Belmond has been calling the wider programme Villeggiatura by Train, an old Italian word for the summer move out of the city to a house in the country.
Garden Suite at Caruso, A Belmond Hotel, Ravello · Courtesy of Belmond
The carriages on the train are the historic ones. The Cote d'Azur dining car, the Etoile du Nord, the L'Oriental. Marquetry, lacquer panels, brass fittings, the Lalique. Black-tie at dinner. A new bar carriage carries a grand piano. None of it has been modernised away.
The bookings sit in the part of the calendar that is hard to fill twice. The Paris-bound spring train comes off the schedule for summer and the Italian routes take over. Caruso reopens its season at the end of April, Splendido in May, Villa San Michele in spring, Hotel Cipriani throughout. The cross-pollination is the point.
The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, Paris to the Amalfi Coast, is bookable through belmond.com. Caruso, A Belmond Hotel, Ravello, opens its 2026 season on 24 April.
Photography courtesy of Belmond · Caruso, A Belmond Hotel, Ravello