About this journey

Toulon station sits at the western end of the Var coast, the departure point for the Ligne de Marseille-Saint-Charles à Vintimille (frontière), one of the main rail arteries of the French Mediterranean shore. The line was built by the Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée and opened in stages between 1858 and 1872, with the section from Marseille reaching Toulon as early as 1859. Running for 259 kilometres in total, it connects the French and Italian Rivieras and carries a mix of express, regional, suburban, and freight services across the same tracks.

Although TGV services call at Toulon, the infrastructure west of Marseille is not high-speed line; trains run at conventional speeds throughout. The line was electrified in the 1960s and Marseille-Saint-Charles station, the destination here, operates under 1500 V DC overhead wire across its 14 terminal platforms and four through tracks. That station opened on 8 January 1848 and is perched on a small hill above the city centre, reached from the streets below by a monumental staircase completed on 22 December 1925. A planned high-speed line, the LGV Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, is intended to run inland of this corridor and be operational around 2035, which would leave the existing coastal route to slower, more unhurried travel.