I am so hungover when I board the Arlecchino that its myriad charms are, at first, as lost on me as an idiom in translation. We are at Rome Termini, and this train has been chartered to whisk us—several dozen strangers and me—to Perugia in celebration of that city’s grande dame, the legendary Sina Brufani hotel, and its 140th birthday. Already a casualty of the festivities on account of too many Negronis the previous night, I find myself a seat upholstered in emerald green velvet, sink into it with my sunglasses on, and let my head rest against the window. We pull out of the station, and for an hour or so, I pass in and out of bleary, slightly nauseous sleep.
When my eyes open, happy green fields outside Poggio Mirteto—awakened like me from winter’s sleep—are shooting past the window. I’ve lost my sunglasses, which have fallen off and have likely nestled themselves into some crevice between seats. As I look around for them, I see that every seat in my car is done in the same rich fabric, a crisp white cover stretched over each headrest. This, I will learn, is the green car—one of four cars total, each with a color of its own. The green car is the last, and in its rear is a viewing gallery lined with spinning chairs from which you can watch the countryside frame the tracks and, if you’re a child or childlike, spin around in circles.
Legend of midcentury architecture Gio Ponti designed the Arlecchino (which translates to “Harlequin”) during Italy’s postwar boom—it was inaugurated in 1960 as part of that year’s Olympics in Rome. Thousands of suited and well-tailored riders rode the Arlecchino, at first on the route between Milan, Rome, and Naples before it became a mainstay on Center-Northern itineraries between Milan, Trieste, Venice, Bologna, and Florence. When the service was retired in 1986, the beautiful cars were left to rust in a warehouse.
Then, in 2015, the FS Foundation (born from original commissioner FS Company) rescued the train and embarked on a meticulous restoration that balanced a return to the original design with the introduction of the necessary technology to operate on the electric tracks that Italy runs on today.
