Staff WriterThere are golf trips, and then there are journeys—those rare ones that feel like they’ve been storyboarded by someone with impeccable taste and an allergy to airport queues. Enter the La Dolce Vita Orient Express, a new luxury rail experience that now aims its polished silverware and perfectly pressed linens straight at Italy’s fairways, thanks to a partnership with Antognolla Golf.
Announced in June 2025, the collaboration centres on La Dolce Vita Orient Express – The Golf Train, offering two itineraries—Italian Swing and Northern Greens—with curated stops at some of the country’s finest golf venues. The headline act is Antognolla Golf, three-time winner of Italy’s Best Course at the World Golf Awards, and a place that makes you understand why artists obsess over light.
A 1960s Italian Mood, Rebuilt for Modern Escape
La Dolce Vita Orient Express is pitched as a celebration of the glamour, creativity and lifestyle of 1960s Italy—less “rush to the gate,” more “linger over the view.” Inspired by the original Orient Express legend first launched in 1883, this is heritage reimagined through a contemporary Italian lens, blending design, gastronomy and slow travel into something that sounds suspiciously like sanity.
The first voyage is scheduled for May 19th, 2026, with guests travelling aboard beautifully restored carriages that evoke Italy’s golden era. Expect 1960s-inspired interiors, refined suites, Michelin-starred dining, and highly personalised service—because if you’re going to chase great golf, you might as well do it without wrestling a baggage carousel.
The Golf Train Itineraries: Italian Swing and Northern Greens
What makes these routes more than a fancy way to change locations is the promise of privileged access—a seamless blend of sport, culture, and refined leisure, with golf as the thread that ties it all together.
Marco Girotto, General Manager at La Dolce Vita Orient Express, said: ‘La Dolce Vita Orient Express offers more than travel; it’s an immersion into Italy’s most refined pleasures.
Our new Golf itineraries combines the elegance of luxury rail with privileged access to Italy’s finest golf destinations, including an exclusive round at the acclaimed Antognolla Golf course, offering a seamless blend of sport, culture, and refined leisure.’
That “slow travel” piece matters. Italy is a country best consumed at human speed—through the window of a train as the landscape shifts, through long lunches that stretch, through the unhurried rhythm that makes you realise you’ve been living like a metronome.
Antognolla Golf: Umbrian Hills, Big-Name Architecture, Real Substance
The four-day itinerary concludes at Antognolla Golf, nestled in the Umbrian Hills. Umbra is Italy’s quieter flex: less postcard chaos than Tuscany, more understated beauty—rolling terrain, shifting shadows, cypress and stone, and air that feels like it’s been filtered.
Golf-wise, Antognolla isn’t just a “nice stop,” it’s the kind of course that stays in your head. Designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr., it carries that design philosophy of using the land’s natural movement rather than flattening it into submission. You’ll find strategic angles, thoughtful green sites, and holes that ask you to choose—not merely swing. It’s the difference between a course that hosts golf and one that converses with it.
And when a venue gets named Italy’s Best Course three times, you can assume it’s not surviving on scenery alone.
Why This Trip Is Globally Distinct
Plenty of elite golf destinations offer great courses and five-star hospitality. What separates this is the way you get there—the journey is part of the performance, not a chore between acts.
Luxury rail travel brings a kind of calm you don’t get from private transfers and terminal announcements. It turns the itinerary into a continuous experience: design, service, dining, conversation, anticipation.
The La Dolce Vita Orient Express concept also plays to Italy’s strengths—style that doesn’t shout, food that doesn’t need marketing, and landscapes that make even jaded travellers fall quiet for a moment.
How It Compares to Other Elite Golf Escapes
If Scotland’s great links trips are poetry in wind and weather, and Ireland’s finest routes are a pub-song with a sting in the chorus, then this Italian version is cinema—sunlight, texture, and timing.
Think of the high-end golf tour model you see in places like the Algarve or the Côte d’Azur, but with a deeper cultural cadence and a signature transit experience that’s closer to a floating boutique hotel—except it’s on rails and headed for a World Golf Awards darling in Umbria.
It’s also a different proposition from the “bucket list resort week.” This is not about staying put. It’s about curated movement—fine golf, fine living, and the luxury of not being hurried.
For the Purists—and the Romantics
Rashid Alabbar commented: ‘This journey is designed for true golf enthusiasts; for those who want to experience Italy while playing on the country’s finest courses, including Antognolla Golf, recognized as one of the best golf courses in Italy. We look forward to welcoming passionate players and offering them the very best in Italian golf.’
That line—“true golf enthusiasts”—lands because the itinerary is built around quality, not quantity. It’s not a box-ticking spree. It’s crafted for people who care about where a course sits in the land, what a designer intended, and how a place feels when the day starts soft and ends gold.
The Takeaway: A Golf Trip That Feels Like a Life Upgrade
The best golf travel doesn’t just give you stories. It changes your pace. This is the promise here: step onto the La Dolce Vita Orient Express, let Italy unspool outside the window, and arrive at Antognolla with your senses switched back on—ready to play a course with pedigree, in a region that still feels like a secret, and with the lingering suspicion that you might never look at an airport the same way again.
For more information about Orient Express Golf visit: https://www.orient-express.com/la-dolce-vita/itinerary/italian-swing/
Learn more about Antognolla Golf here: www.antognolla.com
