On 6 May, King Charles III and Queen Camilla will be crowned at Westminster Abbey and will be part of a procession back to Buckingham Palace.
They will be joined by other working members of the royal family during the royal procession, which will likely include the Prince and Princess of Wales, the Princess Royal and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh.
The King and Queen’s coronation are expected to be attended by 2,000 guests in attendance. This is quite a departure from the King’s late mother’s own coronation in 1953, which saw 8,000 guests present.
Now, it has been revealed that Charles’ procession will also be quite different from the late Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation day.
Elizabeth’s grand procession took two hours and featured tens of thousands of participants, stretching five miles long.
In comparison to his mother, King Charles and Queen Camilla’s procession is set to stretch just 1.3 miles, a quarter of the length of Elizabeth’s.
After the ceremony, they will make their way back to Westminster Abbey via the tried and tested route of Parliament Square, along Whitehall, around Trafalgar Square, through Admiralty Arch and down The Mall back to Buckingham Palace.
This is the reverse of their route to the Abbey, but will mean cutting out Piccadilly, Oxford Street and Regent Street – the route that Elizabeth took to wave at crowds along the way.
During the 1953 coronation procession, the two-and-a-half mile calvacade took 45 minutes to pass any given point.
Charles’s shorter route is understood to have been chosen for practical reasons, with a preference for the familiar journey used on many a royal occasion.
He will travel back in the Gold State Coach, which has been famously criticised by many monarchs for being uncomfortable – including Elizabeth.
In a 2018 documentary, she revealed that the coach, although appearing luxurious with its golden exterior and velvet and satin interior, was “horrible” to travel in.
The Queen’s journey to her coronation was 1.6 miles long, taking a slightly longer route than Charles’s by making her way along the Victoria Embankment by the River Thames.
Unlike his mother, Charles and Camilla will travel to the Abbey in the more high-tech Diamond Jubilee State Coach, which is complete with mod-cons including air-conditioning and shock absorbers.
Additional reporting by PA
