Charles III in France: interviews with Macron, descent of the Champs-Élysées… the program, day by day, of the king’s visit

2023-09-19 12:51:31

Six months after the postponement of his state visit due to the scale of demonstrations against pension reform, King Charles III will finally make his first official trip to France since his coronation on May 6, 2023.

The state visit will begin at 2:45 p.m. with a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe in which he and his wife, Queen Camilla, will participate alongside the French presidential couple. The king should rekindle the flame and lay a wreath at the foot of the tomb of the unknown soldier before heading down the Champs-Élysées in a convertible Citroën DS7, alongside Emmanuel Macron.

The descent will be followed by a bilateral exchange between the two heads of state at 4 p.m., where they will discuss the themes of biodiversity, climate, artificial intelligence but also the war in Ukraine and the situation in the Sahel. Meeting followed immediately by a symbolic replanting ceremony of the oak offered by Emmanuel Macron in honor of the British king, then by a state dinner in a royal atmosphere at the Palace of Versailles.

Travel in Île-de-France and Gironde

Late Thursday morning, Charles III will be welcomed to the Senate by its President Gérard Larcher and the President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, and will deliver a speech, partly in French, to the elected officials. Meanwhile, Queen Camilla will be at the National Library to launch the Franco-British literary prize with Brigitte Macron.

The king is then expected shortly before 3 p.m. at Notre-Dame de Paris, to visit the restoration site of the cathedral partially destroyed by a fire in 2019. He will head immediately afterwards to the National Museum of Natural History, or he will speak at the end of a ministerial round table devoted to climate and biodiversity, while his wife, always accompanied by the French First Lady, will go to 19M.

The British monarch will then head to Saint-Denis, a town which will be the nerve center of the Paris Summer Olympics, to meet sports associations and personalities, in the company of his wife, before meeting again with the French president, this time informally.

On the last day of this visit to France, Charles and Camilla will embark on Friday for Bordeaux, a city once under the control of the English King Henry II, and where 39,000 Britons reside today. In Gironde, they will notably visit an ecological vineyard and meet “British and French military personnel to learn more about collaboration between the two nations in terms of defense”, as indicated in a press release released by the British embassy in Paris .