King Charles III leads a procession of the coffin of his mother Queen Elizabeth II through London on Wednesday before hundreds of thousands of people pay their final respects.
Six days after her death in Scotland, Queen Elizabeth’s body will be borne on a horse-drawn gun carriage from her Buckingham Palace home to Westminster Hall where she will remain for four days until her funeral on Monday.
The king and other senior royals are expected to walk in silence behind the hearse as it winds through the capital’s streets and then hold a vigil upon its arrival at the cavernous 12th-century hall in the Westminster parliament complex.
The public will be let in from 5:00 p.m. (1600 GMT), with mourners already warned they will face an endurance test in round-the-clock queues.
“It’s going to be emotional and I don’t know how I’ll feel going in there as the first one,” said Vanessa Nanthakumaran, a 56-year-old administration assistant originally from Sri Lanka, who took her place at the head of the queue on Monday evening.
“It’s our duty to say thank you. It’s going to be prayers from the heart. It’s going to be very sombre, quiet and overwhelming.”
The government on Wednesday released the map of the full route for the queue, which could snake back up to five miles (eight kilometers) along the river Thames, terminating in Southwark Park.
Strict rules and airport-style security measures have been put in place, with “far more” people expected than the 200,000 who filed past the coffin of the queen’s mother when she died in 2002, according to Prime Minister Liz Truss’s spokesman.
The government has advised people to wear “suitable clothing” and to bring portable battery packs to keep their mobile phones charged—an indication that some people will need to wait overnight for a glimpse of the casket.
Hotel rooms in the capital are increasingly hard to find, with even budget rooms going for £300 ($350) per night, while transport bosses and police are under pressure to keep the city moving and safe in exceptional circumstances.
“It’s a massive challenge for the Metropolitan Police and for me personally, but we have been preparing for many, many years,” the newly appointed head of the London police force, Mark Rowley, told Sky News on Tuesday.
The body of the late 96-year-old monarch, who died “peacefully” at her Balmoral estate in Scotland last Thursday, was flown to London aboard an RAF plane on Tuesday evening from the Scottish capital Edinburgh.
It was then driven to Buckingham Palace, with images of her coffin arriving for one last night at home splashed across Wednesday’s newspapers.
“Welcome Home Ma’am,” read the headline of The Sun, while the Times ran with the headline “Home to Rest” and the Daily Mail “Home to her Family.”
The procession on Wednesday will mirror a similar ceremony in Edinburgh on Monday when her casket was driven through the hushed streets of the city to St Giles’ Cathedral.
There, some 33,000 people filed past the coffin overnight to Tuesday afternoon, the Scottish government said.
“Scotland has now bid our Queen of Scots a sad, but fond farewell. We will not see her like this again,” said First Minister Nicola Sturgeon.
After Scotland and England, Charles continued his tour of the four nations of the United Kingdom on Tuesday by visiting Northern Ireland for the first time as king.
A trip to Wales is expected on Friday.
The queen’s funeral will take place in Westminster Abbey in front of 2,000 VIP guests, with the day declared a public holiday in Britain.
Hundreds of heads of state and government, as well as global royalty, are expected, but Russia, Belarus, Myanmar and North Korea have not been invited to send representatives.
US President Joe Biden has confirmed he will attend, as will French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
