Kings, queens and presidents bade farewell to Monaco's Prince Rainier today at a funeral service in the cathedral where he married Grace Kelly and will be laid to rest beside her.
Eight palace guards slowly carried the prince's coffin, draped in Monaco's red and white flag, from the royal palace to the steps of the cathedral where he wed the Hollywood actress in 1956 and where she was buried after she died in a car crash in 1982.
Six other officers then carried the coffin into the cathedral, where family members lit candles to Rainier, who died on April 6th at the age of 81 of lung, heart and kidney problems.
Princesses Caroline and Stephanie wept as they walked behind the coffin alongside their brother, Prince Albert, who will succeed his father as monarch.
French President Jacques Chirac and King Juan Carlos of Spain sat beside each other in the cathedral at a ceremony attended by about 60 kings, queens and princes, presidents and their representatives.
"In this same cathedral 49 years ago, almost to the day, he married her Royal Highness Princess Grace who disappeared from our view too soon," Bernard Barsi, the archbishop of Monaco, said in a homily.
"With the princess he made an exceptional couple, united by heart and mind," he said of the US-born actress whom Rainier said he always missed after her death. He never remarried.
"Today our people feel like orphans of this great man who loved us and whom we respected and loved," the archbishop said.