They were an unexpected king and queen and their royal romance has weathered several storms but today King Albert II and Queen Paola of Belgium will mark their sixtieth wedding anniversary. The couple, who married on July 2nd 1959 in Brussels, will celebrate surrounded by family and friends. As they become the first Belgian monarchs to reach a Diamond wedding anniversary, Royal Central looks…
Northampton Museums own a pair of flat shoes, believed to be those worn by Queen Victoria on her wedding day, 10 February 1840. Of white satin, they certainly would have complimented the Queen’s own simple wedding dress of finely woven Spitalfields silk satin in her own…
On the upper floor of the Swiss Cottage at Osborne, a rustic structure carved with Biblical texts in German and built behind the individual garden plots belonging to each of the royal children, today’s visitor finds this large room set as if for tea, with napkins turned to…
A picture can tell a story all of its own and some images take on a resonance that lasts beyond the moment they were made. In this occasional series, Royal Central looks at some of the pictures that have told the royal tale and examines the story behind them. Today, it’s a poignant moment when a popular royal tradition actually became a final farewell. Here is a look at the last finals…
When Tsarevich Nicholas visited Windsor as a guest of Queen Victoria in the summer of 1894, he spent a brief time with his fiancée, Princess Alix of Hesse, at Marlborough House, the London residence of the Prince and Princess of Wales on the Mall. As Nicholas wrote with…
Descending the hill at Windsor Castle down towards St George’s Chapel, today’s visitor passes the Deanery at St George’s. The upper level of this building, however, has a hidden secret within its sacred architecture. Over the leads of the Deanery was a constructed…
One room at Windsor Castle is perhaps more associated with Queen Victoria’s marriage to Prince Albert than any other. This is what was called the Blue Closet, part of the private apartments. By a curious coincidence, Prince Albert would later die in another room of the same colour, the Blue Room at Windsor Castle, although this is of course, mere royal happenstance. It was in the Blue Closet…
On 25 October 1897, Queen Victoria drafted her last will, the manuscript of which is preserved at Windsor. Typically for the Queen, such a document existed outside of her journal and in her entry for that day – written up at Balmoral – there is no mention of her making…
The wedding ring of Queen Victoria has its special poignancy, a symbol of the passionate marriage she enjoyed with Prince Albert. Placed on her finger on the morning of 10 February 1840, her private instructions ensured that she would wear it in perpetuity. What do we know…
When the newly-married Queen Victoria returned with Prince Albert to Buckingham Palace, she was with the Prince ‘from 10m. to 2 till 20 m.p.2’, after which the couple went down for the wedding breakfast. During these thirty minutes, Queen Victoria gave Prince Albert his own wedding ring (Elizabeth Longford, Queen Victoria, 152). At this wedding breakfast was the royal cake. This cake, unlike…
