In 2025 the most luxurious new hotel room may be on wheels.
L’Observatoire, a two-person suite on Belmond’s Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, will cost £80,000 (US$101,000) per night when it enters service in March, making it the most expensive train cabin ever.
For that sum, guests will get to sleep inside a cabinet of curiosities created by French photographer and street artist JR. It includes two oculus-shaped skylights that open for stargazing, a “secret” tea room with a fireplace hidden behind a bookshelf, and a free-standing brass bathtub near the foot of the double bed.
All of it moves with the Belmond train, on journeys lasting from one to five nights that connect European cities such as Geneva and Innsbruck or Venice and Amsterdam.
L’Observatoire is part of a growing number of opulent, artist-created suites on trains that will criss-cross the European continent in 2025.
The first came in 2021, when Wes Anderson, better known for directing films, designed a custom carriage for the British Pullman; now the Royal Scotsman has added two Grand Suites designed by Parisian interior designer Tristan Auer.