Each year, Prix Versailles puts the spotlight on the best new architectural designs, from museums and hotels to emporiums and restaurants.
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Now the award series has turned its eyes towards train stations, with seven beautiful new openings making the list for 2026.
Of the selection, three are in Europe: Lyon Part-Dieu Station, Colosseo - Fori Imperiali Station in Rome, and Monte Sant’Angelo Station in Naples.
“In the realm of transport stations, the stakes are high when it comes to creating cultural expressions that are simultaneously beautiful, fashionable and sustainable, that reinforce passenger mobility whilst revitalising local neighbourhoods and that support modernisation whilst showing respect for existing architecture,” Jérôme Gouadain, Prix Versailles secretary general, said.
“These strategies, with their ability to stimulate exchanges and assert a project’s local roots, remain all too rare on today’s global scene.
“In succeeding in this endeavour though, the winning travel hubs give us proof that 21st century passenger stations can be the bridges to a more desirable future.”
Lyon Part-Dieu Station has been transformed into a “real community space” thanks to the work of architectural firms AREP and L’AUC.
Following a decade of work, the train station is now a “sprawling multimodal hub” that is used by both passengers and those passing between different neighbourhoods, Prix Versailles notes.
Rome’s new Metro C station hit the headlines when it opened late last year thanks to the archaeological finds unearthed – and then put on display – here, and now Prix Versailles has added Colosseo - Fori Imperiali Station to its most beautiful stations list.
Writing about its inclusion, Prix Versailles said: “More than a station within a museum or a museum within a station, the structure has turned travel into an archaeological adventure, in which the public’s descent towards the platforms is a literal dive into the city’s history, and where an oculus treats transferring passengers to an unexpected view of the Colosseum.”
Artist Anish Kapoor worked together with the architectural firms Future Systems and AL_A for Naples’ Monte Sant’Angelo Station.
The subterranean world “calls to mind Mount Vesuvius, a cave and the legend of the Cumaean Sibyl”, with the station itself being a “sculpture that the public can enter”.
The full world’s most beautiful stations list
- Town Hall Station, Melbourne, Australia
- Lyon Part-Dieu Station, Lyon, France
- Colosseo - Fori Imperiali Station, Rome, Italy
- Monte Sant’Angelo Station, Naples, Italy
- National Museum Station, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- Western Station, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- LAX/Metro Transit Center, Los Angeles, United States