Exiled Italian king’s remains repatriated after 70 years

The remains of Italy’s King Victor Emmanuel III were repatriated from Egypt and interred in a family mausoleum on Sunday, 71 years after Italians rejected the monarchy in a referendum and the country’s royals went into exile.

Draped in a flag with the House of Savoy crest, a coffin bearing the king’s remains was taken to a chapel inside the Sanctuary of Vicoforte, a church in the northwest Piedmont region, which was the royal family’s base.

Victor Emmanuel died in 1947 in Alexandria, Egypt, a year after he abdicated in favour of his son in an unsuccessful attempt to preserve the monarchy. His remains had been kept in Alexandria’s St Catherine’s Cathedral.

Italy’s post-second world war constitution banned male descendants of the royal house from Italian soil because of the family’s earlier support for the Fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini. The ban was lifted in 2002.

The remains of Victor Emmanuel’s wife, Queen Elena, were transferred on Friday from Montpellier, France, and were similarly interred in the chapel during a private ceremony, the town of Vicoforte said. Elena died in France in 1959.