The first rehearsal for the King’s Coronation took place through the eerily quiet streets of London in the early hours of this morning (Tuesday, April 18).
The rehearsal was due to start at 10pm but was delayed before hundreds of military personnel followed the route on horseback in preparation for the coronation on May 6.
The rehearsal is for when Charles and the Queen Consort will make their way back from Westminster Abbey via Parliament Square, along Whitehall, around Trafalgar Square, through Admiralty Arch and down The Mall back to Buckingham Palace.
The coronation procession stretches to just 1.3 miles, around a quarter of the length of the late Queen’s five-mile celebratory journey which went through Piccadilly, Oxford Street and Regent Street.
The grand procession in 1953 took two hours and featured tens of thousands of participants, with the two-and-a-half mile cavalcade taking 45 minutes to pass any given point.
While there was no sight of it at the rehearsal, Charles and Camilla will be taken to Westminster Abbey in the Diamond Jubilee State Coach and return via the same route in the Gold State Coach.
The coronation will see the largest military ceremonial operation in 70 years, with more than 6,000 men and women of the UK’s armed forces taking part in the historic royal event.
Sailors, soldiers, and aviators from across the UK and the breadth of the Commonwealth will accompany Charles and Camilla to and from Westminster Abbey.
Nearly 400 armed forces personnel from at least 35 Commonwealth countries will also be on parade to mark the historic moment.
The King will be anointed at the Coronation in full knowledge of his “difficult” task as monarch and in recognition of how he “shares in our human frailties and vulnerabilities”, the Archbishop of Canterbury said.
Archbishop Justin Welby, writing in the official souvenir programme, said Charles will swap his “robes of status and honour” for a simple white shirt for the private anointing during the ceremony.
