, April 2015 In November 2011, operations of the
Artesia cross-border service, which ran trains between Paris and several Italian destinations, was permanently terminated after the French national railway operator
SNCF decided to withdraw its involvement in the venture. Even prior to its discontinuation,
Trenitalia and
Veolia Transport (later Transdev) had announced their plans to jointly operate a new train operator, branded
Thello, that would run day and night international services between the two countries. From 11 December 2011,
night trains run by Thello operated daily on the route between
Paris Gare de Lyon,
Dijon-Ville,
Milano Centrale, and
Venezia Santa Lucia. In December 2012, Thello took over services between Paris,
Firenze Santa Maria Novella, and
Roma Termini, which had previously been operated by Artesia. However, on 14 December 2013, the service was withdrawn after only a single year of operation. During 2013, the company acquired the safety certificate required for traffic on the Belgian railway network. Thello had announced that they wanted to operate in direct competition with
Thalys on the Paris-Brussels route; however, no such services would ever materialise. Following the granting of permission by regulatory authorities that same year, Thello operated daytime trains between
Milan and
Marseille, via
Genoa and
Nice from December 2014. From 12 April 2015, the frequency of direct trains between Nice and Milan was increased from one to three daily services. In June 2016,
Transdev sold their 33% share in Thello to Trenitalia, giving their Italian partner full control over Thello. Transdev stated that poor revenues were due to increased customs controls thanks to the
European migrant crisis, the
Paris terrorist attacks in November 2015 as well as delays caused by railway engineering works. On 21 March 2018, Roberto Rinaudo, Thello's
CEO, announced the company's ambitious to operate a daytime
high speed service that would link Milan, Turin, Lyon, and Paris; it was also stated that the booking of train paths for the new service had already commenced. In June of the following year, further details emerged; the envisioned service, which was stated to potentially begin as early as June 2020, would be operated by Italian
Frecciarossa 1000 trainsets and was declared to have a total journey time of six hours and 45 minutes end-to-end, more than 20 minutes faster than the existing
TGV services due to the Frecciarossia trains being fitted with the necessary
European Train Control System (ETCS) apparatus to facilitate their running on the
Turin–Milan high-speed railway. In March 2020, Thello
overnight services between Paris and Venice were suspended due to the
COVID-19 pandemic having caused a significant drop in patronage; at the same time, the daytime train service was also cut back to run between Nice and Milan. During June 2021, all services under the Thello brand were withdrawn; at the same time, Trenitalia announced its focus on operating
high speed services between the two countries in the aftermath of the pandemic. the decision also contrasted sharply against efforts by other operators (such as
ÖBB Nightjet) to increase the number of night trains in Europe around the same time.
Milan–Paris Frecciarossa Despite the withdrawal of Thello, Trenitalia remained interested in running high speed services between the two nations. Accordingly, during October 2021, it was announced that Trenitalia would be relaunching cross-border services between France and Italy under the
Trenitalia France brand; in support of this, a test train had been run in the previous month while approval for the rolling stock had been received back in June of that same year. On 18 December 2021, the
Milan–Paris Frecciarossa was launched. Differences from the prior operation include a focus on high speed service, including exclusively running
Frecciarossa 1000 trainsets so far. On 5 April 2022, Trenitalia France introduced a shortworking service between
Lyon-Perrache and Paris Gare de Lyon, with an intermediate stop in
Lyon-Part-Dieu. ==Rolling stock==