The first Orient Express hotel comes to Rome!

Travel artisan, Orient Express chooses Rome, "the Eternal City" as the first stopover for its hotels collection. Opening expected at the end of 2023.

Orient Express Rome

​150 years ago, Georges Nagelmackers created the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. Its first luxury trains then set off across Europe. A few years later, the legendary Orient-Express train joined Paris to Constantinople. Faced with the success encountered, the Compagnie des Grands Hôtels was inaugurated. Over the countries crossed, sumptuous palaces embodying the art of living according to Orient Express open their doors. Today the story continues. Travel artisan, Orient Express chooses Rome, "the Eternal City" as the first stopover for its hotels collection. Opening expected at the end of 2023.

Orient Express, Piazza de la Minerva

The first Orient Express Hotel will be located in the Pantheon area in the historic center of Rome, at a prestigious address, Piazza de la Minerva. Alongside the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, the only Gothic-style church in Rome and which houses a Christ signed Michelangelo, and facing the Egyptian obelisk signed by Bernini, Orient Express chooses the former Palazzo Fonseca, a 17th century palace, as the first hotel celebrating the heritage and the art of living according to Orient Express.

Built in 1620 by order of the Fonseca, a wealthy aristocratic family from the Kingdom of Portugal and established in Rome since the 15th century, the Palace opened as a hotel at the beginning of the 19th century, before taking the name of Grand Hotel de la Minerve in 1832. 

Orient Express Grand Hôtel de la Minerve, the soul of travel

Behind its 17th century facade, this historic hotel with a lobby decorated with Roman columns and sculptures signed by Rinaldo Rinaldi, disciple of Canova, topped with a panoramic terrace where you can admire the dome of the Pantheon, the Sant'Ivo dome or the Quirinal roof, has seen the greatest travelers for two centuries.

Stage of the "Grand Tour" leading across Europe all the aristocratic youth, but also artists, collectors, men of churches, intellectuals, adventurer and globetrotter. Stendhal stayed there for a few months, finding inspiration to write his "Promenades dans Rome", and George Sand, in love with Italy, stayed there for a long time in 1855. Later, it was the writer Thomas Bernhard who housed Murau there, the character of his novel, "Extinction".

See you in 2023

​"For 150 years, Orient Express has sublimated the art of travel around its luxury trains, its unique experiences and its collections of rare objects, explains Guillaume de Saint Lager, Vice President of Orient Express. Today a new era begins, the launch of a unique hotel collection around the world and in one of the most romantic capitals of Europe. An ideal choice for telling new stories from Orient Express."

​VISION Destinations | March 21

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