The King and Queen are celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary today in the stunning surroundings of the Italian capital of Rome. Charles and Camilla wed in Windsor exactly two decades ago and tonight they will mark the milestone on their state visit to Italy with a glittering state banquet, where they will be joined by leading figures from Italian life
And while the couple will have no doubt been looking forward to the trip, there’s one thing that Camilla may have been apprehensive about. Ingrid Seward, Editor-in-Chief of Majesty magazine, previously claimed that Camilla “doesn’t like flying” and isn’t a “great traveller”. Despite this, well-travelled Charles and Camilla didn’t wait too long after their wedding before making their first overseas tour together – an eight-day trip to the USA in November 2005.
During what The New York Times rather unfairly described as a “low-key US debut”, Charles and Camilla paid their respects to the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks at Ground Zero before privately meeting the families of some of the 67 Britons who lost their lives in the tragedy – an experience the then-Duchess of Cornwall described as “terribly, terribly moving”.
The week-long trip also included a dinner at the White House hosted by President George W Bush and visits to New Orleans and San Francisco, where Charles chewed the (organic) fat with eco-aware farmers. During a trip to a food market, Camilla sampled local produce before enjoying half a pint of IPA at an old-fashioned saloon bar.
“I’m eating my way around here. Luckily I’ve got a good appetite,” she joked. At a star-studded cocktail reception held in their honour at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the couple rubbed shoulders with guests including Dynasty legend Joan Collins, musician Sting and a certain future US president, Donald Trump – then best known as host of the stateside version of The Apprentice.
Despite a banner being held aloft outside the United Nations building stating, ‘Camilla, you are not Diana’, the American people couldn’t help but warm to the Duchess’s gung-ho spirit. “By the end, the eight-day tour was deemed to have been nothing short of a triumph,” said royal biographer Penny Junor.
Camilla’s fear of flying this hasn’t stopped her and Charles from flying the flag for Great Britain, and over the past two decades they have visited a dizzying array of countries.
While many of the trips are celebratory, some have had a more poignant significance, such as their Remembrance Day visit to France in November 2008. On the eve of Armistice Day, Charles and Camilla joined France’s then-President Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy for dinner at the Elysée Palace in Paris, before attending a ceremony at Verdun to mark the 90th anniversary of the end of the First World War.
Six years later they were back in France – this time alongside the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. The royals were in Normandy to honour the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings – the largest seaborne invasion in history.
Visits to Commonwealth countries have played an important part in the King and Queen’s overseas tour calendar. In 2012, the couple spent a week visiting Papua New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee. Six years later, they had the honour of opening the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia on behalf of the Queen.
In 2019 they took to the skies again, this time on a tour of the Caribbean, with stop-offs in Barbados, St Lucia and the Cayman Islands. During the trip, they even made history, becoming the first members of the British royal family to visit Cuba. Luckily, they got some downtime from their official duties and, while visiting Havana, the pair were pictured giggling like teenagers as they shook mojitos in a local bar.
Each overseas tour involves meticulous forward planning – especially as the couple don’t travel light. The Queen’s former press secretary, Dickie Arbiter, even revealed that the monarch travels with his own personal packs of blood – in case there is a sudden, unexpected need for a transfusion.
“There’s never any guarantee you are going to get the right type of blood at your destination,” he explained, stressing that “every eventuality” must be taken into consideration.
In her book The Duchess: The Untold Story , Penny Junor detailed how, on a tour of the Balkans in 2016, the royals’ entourage “comprised 24 people, including valet, dresser, hairdresser, secretary, private secretaries, press secretaries, security, equerry and doctor.”
Despite such attention to detail, royal tours don’t always go to plan. A trip to Jordan in March 2020 was scuppered due to the Covid-19 outbreak, while the couple’s first overseas tour as King and Queen also had to be scrapped due to riots breaking out across France.
Instead, they embarked on a state visit to Germany in March 2023, where the red carpet was well and truly rolled out. In Berlin, the couple posed in front of the historic Brandenburg Gate alongside President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife Elke Büdenbender, and later met crowds of eager fans who’d turned out to greet them.
At a state banquet, the King gave a speech – in German, no less – in which he said he and the Queen had been “deeply touched” by the warm welcome they’d received from the “very special” German nation. Six months after their delayed visit, the King and Queen finally made it to France, where Charles again made history, becoming the first British monarch to address the French Senate.
At a star-studded banquet at the Palace of Versailles, he thanked President Emmanuel Macron for his “generosity of spirit” following the death of Queen Elizabeth 12 months earlier, saying, “Your words, at that time, meant a great deal to us too. You said that she had touched your hearts – and it was she who held France in the greatest affection, as, of course, did my grandmother Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother.”
Despite both the monarch and his wife being in their late seventies, they are showing little sign of slowing down – even the King’s cancer diagnosis last year only put his touring schedule on pause temporarily, with he and Camilla taking on an ambitious 11-day trip to Australia and Samoa just five months after he resumed his royal duties.
“Having got the Australia and Samoa tour under their belt, I don’t think they are going to slow down – not any time in the immediate future,” says royal writer Katie Nicholl. “I think Charles has got too much that he still wants to do.”
Of course, the King and Queen’s overseas trips aren’t limited to royal tours, which are very much work-orientated. They also enjoy holidaying together, one of their favourite overseas destinations being the Greek island of Corfu, the birthplace of Charles’s father, Prince Philip. The couple are said to be fond of the warm climate and crystal clear waters, reportedly staying at the island’s luxury Rothschild Villa – once dubbed the ‘Kensington Summer Palace’ – in Kerasia.
Another island close to their hearts, and closer to home, is Tresco in the Isles of Scilly. When holidaying on the private island, the couple stay at Dolphin House, a grand five-bedroom holiday home with spectacular views across the Atlantic. Whether on official duty or not, one thing is certain – the royal couple must have clocked up an astonishing number of air miles.
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