From Paris with Love: All Aboard the Orient Express

L’Institut du Monde Arab (The Arab World Institute) was founded in Paris in 1980 by 18 Arab countries with France to research and disseminate information about the Arab world and its cultural and spiritual values. It is located in the fifth arrondissement. The façade facing the Seine River curves around, following the contour of the river, but the other façade is rectangular and faces a large public space.

The institute presented its exhibit, Il Etait une Fois l’Orient Express (Once upon a time on the Orient Express) on the plaza outside the institute. The original train wagons and their interiors were restored for the exhibition, and visitors could walk through the lavishly decorated cars and observe the comfort and beauty in which travelers of the era went from Paris to Istanbul.

The train’s inaugural trip was on September 4, 1883. The train connected Paris and Istanbul in two days and three nights. It passed through Baghdad, Tripoli and Cairo, so its origins are interlinked with Arab culture and tangential to the growing western interest in Oriental culture.

Approach to l’Institut du Monde Arab

A ten-wheel steam locomotive

It pulled the train in the film Murder on the Orient Express, directed by Sidney Lumet. The movie was from a book written by Agatha Christie. The engine was restored in 2013; it took 6 months and 2500 hours of labor to get it into its present, pristine condition.

In the background is the marquee for another exhibit at the Institute,

Hajj, the Pilgrimage to Mecca.

The marquee pictures the Holy Kabah, the cube-shaped building towards which Muslims face five times a day in prayer. A trip to Mecca, at least once in a lifetime, is required of all able-bodied Muslims.

Entrance to the exhibition, with the Arab World Institute in the background

The dining car, Anatolie, on the right, was also restored to its former glory. Top chef, Yannick Alléno, prepared three-star gourmet dinners with an oriental flair for the duration of the exhibition. His menu was inspired by the French cuisine served on the train at the time.

FYI: Menu Anatolie, priced at 120 euros per person, offered a mise en bouche (bite-sized hors d’oeuvre), appetizer, main course and dessert. The Menu Flèche d'Or added an aperitif and three paired wines and cost 160 euros per person. Luxury caterer Potel & Chabot realized the menus devised by Yannick Alléno. There were 2 seatings: one at 7:00 PM and the other at 9:30 PM.

The daylight-receiving façade, in effect an automated shutter system which opens and closes in response to daylight, is ten stories high.

Behind the glass panes, there is a metallic screen with motifs reminiscent of traditional Islamic geometric artwork.

The south wall contains 240 apertures that operate like the lens of a camera. Computerized light sensors signal a system that activates these shutters. They open and close, depending on the sun's rays, controlling heat and light from the sun in the building.

If you are lucky, you can watch the screens move when the light changes, as when the sun goes behind clouds and then reappears. (On the day I was here, it was either overcast or raining, so I didn’t get to see the movement.)

Directional sign for exhibitions

Design for the exhibit--Once upon a Time on the Orient Express.
The exhibit ran from April 4 - August 31, 2014

Visitors boarded the train in small groups.

The tour begins in the first Pullman car.

The three train cars on the plaza

In the first train car, the Golden Arrow, the tables were arranged with travelers’ personal effects, their newspapers, their jewelry, their drinks, as if they had just left the table momentarily. Each table told a story; some were the tables of well-known celebrities of the day, some tables held information relating to current events, and some showed how travelers passed the time en route to their destination.

Perhaps the cigarette in the ashtray was that of Marlene Dietrich, a heavy smoker and frequent traveler on the Orient Express. The train was the setting for her real-life romantic liaisons.

Edmond About probably sat here. He was a journalist on the inaugural trip of the Orient Express. On the table were a game box with cards, dice, etc. and a bottle of Vals Eau minerale. On his return, About enthusiastically endorsed the journey.

A game of Solitaire in progress

Pierre Loti (1850-1923) took the Orient Express when he left Istanbul in 1890. He was a French novelist, and his career as a naval officer took him to the Middle and Far East, providing him with the exotic settings of his novels and reminiscences. Ultimately, he decried the westernization of the Orient resulting from the development of tourism.

Graham Greene (1904-1991), an English novelist, chose the Orient Express as a setting for two of his novels.

Stamboul Train (1932) was renamed Orient Express when it was published in the United States. The other novel was Travels with my Aunt (1969).

Josephine Baker and Asmanhan, both major celebrities, could have sat at this table. Josephine Baker was an American-born dancer and singer who became a superstar in Europe during the 1920s. In September, 1931, she gave the surrounding train passengers an extraordinary, impromptu concert. Asmanhan was one of the most famous actresses/singers in the Arab world between the two world wars.

French newspaper headline: “Germany Surrenders Armistice Signed,”

referring to the Armistice of 1918

British newspaper headline: “We are at War with Germany” The quotes cited in the paper were made by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain at the beginning of World War II.

It looks like a bit of gambling was going on with an after-dinner cup of coffee. Pince-nez glasses lying on the table were the choice of detective Hercule Poirot. The antique Arabian-looking dagger, also on the table, was suggestive of the murder weapon in the movie, Murder on the Orient Express.

The bowler hat on the chair and top hat on the back of the chair could have been left there by any one of the cosmopolitan clientele who frequented the Orient Express-- maybe a business tycoon, a head of state, a member of European royalty, an ambassador or even a spy.

La Stampa (The Press), an Italian daily newspaper

Le Train Bleu was originally a dining/club car popular for transporting the upper crust of Britain from Calais to the French Riviera during the 1920’s. Le Train Bleu exists today as a brasserie in the Gare de Lyon. Its décor is opulent, with gilt decoration and painted ceilings, almost as elaborately decorated as the palace of Versailles. The food is supposed to be good, too. I hope to dine there on my next trip to Paris.

The mahogany bar in the Club Car

The paneled walls are inlaid with flower bouquets made with a French molten glassmaking technique by René Lalique, master glass designer.

Club Car

This part of the Club car displayed many items associated with characters in the movie,

Murder on the Orient Express, 1974.

Hercule Poirot’s homburg sat on the chair.

Caroline Hubbard’s passport lay open on the table. Caroline Hubbard (played by Lauren Bacall in the movie) was the grandmother of the child abducted and killed by the murdered man.

Agatha Christie’s fur coat

Agatha Christie’s table

Agatha Christie often traveled to Baghdad on the train to meet her husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. The movie Murder on the Orient Express with detective Hercule Poirot was based on her book written in 1934.

The fur stole of the Countess Andrenyi (played by Jacqueline Bissett in the movie) is draped over her chair. She was the aunt of the abducted child. The antique pipe case on the table belonged to Colonel Arbuthnot (played by Sean Connery), who was a close friend of the abducted child’s father. (A pipe cleaner was found in the murdered man’s cabin.)

The flower bouquet was made by the fused glass technique, pâté de verre, by Lalique. This artwork is repeated throughout the railway car and adds to the feeling of first-class luxury.

Insignia of The International Sleeping Car Company and Grand European Express Trains

The exhibit continued in the Arab World Institute proper, with a treasure trove of memorabilia from the glory days of the Orient Express

Georges Nagelmackers (1845-1905), Belgian businessman and creator of the Orient Express, first brought the American "Pullman" train wagons to Europe, readapting them into a comfortable, luxurious “hotel on wheels.”

A white marble bust of Georges Nagelmackers, 1912

A poster advertising the cities through which the Orient Express passed

A poster illustrating the Ctesiphon Arch near Baghdad. The arch is all that remains of the imperial palace of Ctesiphon, a great city of ancient Mesopotamia.

A poster advertising the festivals of Ghezireh in Cairo, 1896. The Ghezireh Palace, on the island of Ghezireh, in Cairo, was a hotel belonging to the CIWL, Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, 1896

A conductor’s uniform

Louis Vuitton was among the luggage-makers that created trunks which were like miniature wardrobe closets. Also created were small suitcases for personal items, each with its own predetermined space.

Routing for a trunk (Simplon was an Alpine tunnel)

Interior of a compartment

Wash basin in a compartment

The artwork in the exhibit reflected the Orientalist period, when paintings of an erotic/exotic nature reflected the perceptions of a western society vis à vis the Orient.