About this journey

Ventimiglia station, opened at the end of 1871 and renamed Ventimiglia International station in 1882, sits at a genuine frontier in European railway engineering. The station is electrified at 1.5 kV DC — neither matching the Italian network's 3 kV DC nor the 25 kV 50 Hz AC used on the Marseille–Ventimiglia line itself — so Italian trains entering the station operate at half power, and handover between Trenitalia and SNCF must be carefully managed at a point roughly 9 kilometres from the French border.

The Marseille–Ventimiglia railway was built in several stages between 1858 and 1872 by the Chemins de fer de Paris à Lyon et à la Méditerranée, with the final section reaching Ventimiglia completed in 1872 to create a 259-kilometre line connecting France, Monaco, and Italy. Crossing the rugged Maritime Alps demanded a combination of tunnels, viaducts, and bridges, including a massive steel viaduct over the Var river and the 5.8-kilometre Tenda Tunnel, considered a major engineering achievement at the time. The line also carried strategic importance during the Second World War, transporting troops and supplies to the Italian front. The journey ends at Cannes station, which first opened on 10 April 1863 and was rebuilt in its current form in 1975; today its platforms run largely underground beneath the city centre, a quiet contrast to the exposed coastal and Alpine engineering that defines so much of the route from the Italian border.