Currently there are about ten TGV trains per day going from Metz to Paris (and the same number from Paris to Metz) via the new high-speed railway line TGV-Est — provided there are no strikes in progress and the country isn’t shut down because of an acute pandemic, as in the spring of 2020.
Most of these connections are non-stop, and the journey takes not quite an hour and a half. The top speed on this new line is 320 kilometers per hour, which is nearly 199 miles per hour. (I love the way the French say kilomètres par heure, all strung together: kilomètrerheure.)
Before 2007, when the new TGV line was inaugurated, there were already several non-stop trains each day between Metz and Paris, but these were conventional EuroCity trains running on conventional tracks, and they took nearly three hours to get to Paris, which is twice as long as it takes on the current TGV trains.
(TGV = train à grand vitesse, which means ‘train of great speed’.)
In the TGV bar car between Metz and Paris
Refreshments are available in the TGV bar car, but there is no dining car — which is understandable in this case because the journey is so quick.
One of the TGV trains at the station Paris-Est
My photos in this post are from 2008. I revised the text in 2023.
See more posts on the city of Metz, in the Grand Est region of France.
See more posts on train travel.
That’s faster than our train from home to London….about 65 miles!
France can be proud of its fantastic TGV – distances normally flown by plane in other countries can be easily travelled by train. 700 km from Paris to Marseille in less than 3 hours, or even better: 600km from Paris to Bordeaux in 2 hours – it makes me speechless (coming from Germany, where travelling by trains is two times slowlier…)
That’s one fast train. Not even been on an ICE here in so long. I’m always on the slow train to Franconia is seems.
That is a great time to visit Paris. My sister was pregnant with her husband were in car crash dead in Metz years ago But they couldn’t find this guy ..so terrible Anita
What a horrible memory of Metz. It’s so awful when something like that happens.
👌👌
We love traveling by train in France—so efficient and easy.
Yes, especially on the TGV routes. But not always so efficient on the slower branch lines.