the memory
NoonSeptember 9, 2022 – 11:10 am
The curious off-program during the visit to Palazzo dei Normanni with her husband Filippo. In 1992, the English royals stopped at Capaci on the site of the massacre
from Ch. Ghost.
In October 1980, Queen Elizabeth together with her consort, Prince Philip of Edinburgh, at the end of a trip to Italy visited Palermo, also stopping at the Palazzo dei Normanni, seat of the Sicilian Regional Assembly. In the Sala Gialla (now named after Piersanti Mattarella) a meeting was organized with a delegation of British citizens residing in the Sicilian capital. But in the course of that meeting there was a curious unscheduled. While she was in the Sala Gialla – says an employee of Ars, now retired – the queen expressed the desire to look out on the balcony to greet a crowd of Palermitans who had gathered in the square in front of the Palazzo dei Normanni.
The carpet
The protocol stipulated that the balcony should be covered with a cloth, but since that greeting was not foreseen, no one had prepared the cloth. After a few moments of embarrassment, a solution was found. The then head of parliamentary assistants – says the former Ars employee – left the room, after a few minutes returned with a high quality carpet and unrolled it, placing it on the balcony railing. The queen could therefore look out to greet the Palermitans and thank them for the warmth with which they had welcomed her presence in the city.
The stop in Capaci
In May 1992, however, four days after the Capaci massacre, the royals of England, headed to Malta for an official visit, changed their program by stopping for a few minutes at the site of the massacre to commemorate the victims. Elizabeth II and Philip of Edinburgh were expected at the port of Palermo, where the royal yacht “Britannia” arrived on 25 May and was to transfer them to Malta for an official visit. The trip had been planned for months, and the program was very rigid: there were only the transit of the British royals and a greeting to the mayor in the port of the city, but in a Palermo that had not been the same for two days. Elizabeth II was aware of this, and on May 27, 1992 the program changed.
9 September 2022 | 11:10
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