Gare d'Austerlitz, officially Paris Austerlitz, is one of the seven large Paris railway terminal stations. The station is located on the left bank of the Seine in the southeastern part of the city, in the 13th arrondissement. It is the start of the Paris–Bordeaux railway; the line to Toulouse is connected to this line. In 1997, the Ministry of Culture designated the Gare d'Austerlitz a historical monument; it became the fifth large railway station in Paris to receive such a label, as currently only Montparnasse has not been attributed it.

The railway from Paris to Bordeaux is an important French 584-kilometre long railway line, that connects Paris to the southwestern port city Bordeaux via Orléans and Tours. The railway was opened in several stages between 1840 and 1853, when the section from Poitiers to Angoulême was finished. The opening of the LGV Atlantique high speed line from Paris to Tours in 1989 has decreased the importance of this section of the line for passenger traffic; the opening of the LGV Sud Europe Atlantique in 2017 has seen all long distance passenger trains migrating to that line and leaving space for more regional and local trains, as well as freight trains.