Orient Express returns to Italy in 2023 with Dolce Vita design

60s style and Italian dolce vita have arrived on the Orient Express for 2023. Photo / Supplied Accor

The world's most famous sleeper train is about to get a mid-century re-vamp.

The Orient Express is an icon of Deco and Miss Marple intrigue. The compartments are as 1920s as Hecule Poirot's moustache.

However, newly released designs for 2023 are more Federico Fellini than Murder on the Orient Express.

As a project to rejuvenate Italian luxury rail tourism by Arsenale S.p.A, the new carriages cut a very different form.

The famous Venice-Simplon Orient Express is rerouting six carriages in the direction of bold Italian design.

A 'Dolce Vita' inspired trains, full of 60s Italian verve have been commissioned to excite a new generation of traveller onto the rails.

Cool canteen onboard the Orient Express La Dolce Vita. Photo / Accor, Dimorestudio

The carriages and compartments still command a premium price tag, however within them you'll find geometric shapes and some seriously groovy patterns.

As rail travel experiences an eco-conscious renaissance the Italian tourism is looking to cash in on the boom. At €2000 or $3,330 a night, it's an experience for a passenger with very deep, paisley-lined pockets.

The Milanese design studio Dimorestudio has been commissioned to produce six trains. Each of the trains will contain 12 deluxe cabins, 18 suites and a dining carriage serving up Italian haute cuisine.

The trains which are due to come online in 2023 will be run on a route through the High Alps into Italy's northern lakes, through Milan, Florence and Rome.

International itineraries will be taking passengers from Paris through the Mediterranean, Croatia into Turkey Istanbul.

Swinging 60s have arrived on the Orient Express. Photo / Accor

The train and its journeys are aiming to evoke "a historical period of glamour, joie de vivre and artistic fervour in Italy during the 1960s."

"We will take travelers to discover new itineraries, to unique places where they will be able to live a 'Made In Italy' experience with a warmth entirely our own," says Paolo Barletta, CEO of Arsenale.

Stephen Alden CEO of Orient Express for Accor, says the project intends to bring the "spirit of Orient Express back to life for a new generation of travellers."

The restaurant onboard the Orient Express La Dolce Vita Photo / Accor

This isn't the first redux of the dapper intercontinental train.

Earlier this year American film director Wes Anderson was invited to cast his own quirky take on the storied sleeper train, with a pleasingly symmetrical art directed carriage.

Anderson's 1950s Cygnus carriage design was another reimagining of the train for a different era. Featuring silver-plated swans, and a garish colour pallet of pink, mint and burnt umber - it was a project to delight both cinemaphiles and trainspotters.