Expo / Naples
Back on track
Launched in 1960 during a wave of postwar, pre-Olympics optimism in Rome, the ETR 252 train was the height of ambitious rail travel. Designed by leading architects, L’Arlecchino boasted jet-age levels of onboard luxury with its 180-degree windows and all First Class seats. Yet how can a retro-futuristic icon keep pace with the innovations of high-speed services and the demands of the 21st-century traveller? Monocle boards a newly refurbished L’Arlecchino for the three-hour trip to Naples – a journey filled with conga lines and brief encounters – to find out.
Beside a brass-and-leather-trimmed bar cart, in the middle of an old locomotive train, a posse of jovial passengers has sprung to their feet and is now holding on to each other’s hips or jacket tails as they form an impromptu conga line. In a scene that filmmaker Federico Fellini would have been proud to have staged, a dog-collared Monsignor is following a cream-blazered culture minister and a besuited rail executive through the seemly carriage of the just-renovated etr 252 L’Arlecchino train as we rattle from Rome towards Naples.
One man in the…
