Princess Anne successfully accomplished an important task assigned by the Buckingham Palace as she travelled to Belgium on Monday.
The Princess Royal was joined by her husband Sir Tim Laurence to mark the reopening of the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, following a significant restoration project.
During the key royal engagement, King Charles’s sister delivered crucial remarks on behalf of the monarch. Meanwhile, Princess Claire was representing King Philippe of Belgium.
Anne, who is also the chair of the Commonwealth War Graves, praised the commission and the city of Ypres for their “care and craftsmanship” with the memorial.
“We are also extremely grateful to the city of Ypres, to the region of Flanders and to the Kingdom of Belgium, whose people have, for generations, embraced this memorial as part of their own heritage,” Anne addressed the crowd.
“Your continued support and partnership – both in kind, and financial – is living testimony to the strength of the bonds that exist between our nations.”
She added that the Menin gate has “long stood as more than stone and inscription”.
“It is a threshold between past and present, silence and memory, sacrifice and gratitude. For nearly a century, it has commemorated the names of the missing — over 54,000 soldiers who marched into battle along this very path, and whose bodies were never found,” she continued.
“Their bodies may lie in unmarked graves or lost battlefields, but their names, etched into this gate, have never faded from the memory of those who pass or stand beneath it.”
The restoration work for the iconic First World War memorial, originally unveiled on July 24, 1927, began in 2023 and had required meticulous attention from architects, conservationists, stonemasons and horticulturalists.
Anne concluded her speech noting that the memorial will continue “to stand as a testament to the courage, sacrifice, and enduring peace for which they fought. This restoration is for you.”
