It is located in the 10th arrondissement, not far southeast from the Gare du Nord, facing the Boulevard de Strasbourg, part of the north–south axis of Paris created by Georges-Eugène Haussmann.

Designed by architect François Duquesnay, it was renamed the "Gare de l'Est" in 1854, after the expansion of service to Mulhouse.

At the top of the west facade of the Gare de l'Est is a statue by the sculptor Philippe Joseph Henri Lemaire, representing the city of Strasbourg, while the east end of the station is crowned by a statue personifying Verdun, by Varenne.

The Gare de l'Est is the terminus of a strategic railway network extending towards the eastern part of France, and it saw large mobilizations of French troops, most notably in 1914, at the beginning of World War I.

In the main-line train hall, a monumental painting by Albert Herter, Le Départ des poilus, août 1914 dating from 1926, illustrates the departure of these soldiers for the Western front.