The heart of British-born Queen Marie of Romania was finally laid to rest on Wednesday after criss-crossing the nation for 77 years. Encased in a small silver casket, the heart was brought to Pelisor Castle in the Carpathian Mountains and placed in the room where, in the former royal family's words, it "beat for the last time".
Marie's descendants were among those watching as the casket, draped in the British and Romanian flags, was carried out of the National History Museum in Bucharest by two soldiers, accompanied by eight officers on horseback, to the tune of both nations' anthems.
A Romanian guard soldier put in a car the gilded silver casket containing the heart of the Queen Marie of Romania covered by a national flag (Photo: AFP)
A crowd of several hundred watched as the heart of Marie, a grand-daughter of Britain's Queen Victoria, was carried in a procession along the wide Calea Victoriei boulevard before being transported by car to Pelisor, 120 kilometres (75 miles) north of the capital.
The wife of King Ferdinand I, who reigned from 1914 to 1927, Marie died in 1938. Her body was interred at the monastery in the town of Curtea de Arges, but she wanted her heart to be laid to rest in a specially built chapel in the Black Sea town of Balcic, which was home to the queen's favourite summer residence.
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