Britain is laying Queen Elizabeth II to rest on Monday at a state funeral attended by leaders and monarchs from around the world, and up to a million people lining the streets of London to say a final goodbye to a monarch who helped unify the nation through her 70-year reign, according to AP News.
Monday has been declared a public holiday in honour of Queen Elizabeth, who died September 8 at 96. Her funeral will be broadcast live to more than 200 countries and territories worldwide and screened to crowds in parks and public spaces across the U.K.
Police officers from around the country will be on duty as part of London’s biggest one-day policing operation.
On the evening before the funeral, King Charles III issued a message of thanks to people in the U.K. and around the world, saying he and his wife Camilla, the queen consort, have been “moved beyond measure” by the large numbers of people who have turned out to pay their respects to the queen.
For the funeral, Elizabeth’s coffin will be taken from Westminster Hall, across the road to Westminster Abbey, on a royal gun carriage drawn by 142 Royal Navy sailors. The same carriage was used to carry the coffins of late kings Edward VII, George V and George VI, and of Churchill.
The service, in the Gothic medieval abbey where Elizabeth was married in 1947 and crowned in 1953, will be attended by 2,000 people ranging from world leaders to health care workers and volunteers.
Mourners started arriving to take their seats shortly after 8 a.m. (0700 GMT; 3 a.m. EDT). Dignitaries were arriving later, with many heads of state gathering at a nearby hospital to be driven by bus to the abbey.
The funeral will end with two minutes of silence followed by the national anthem and a piper’s lament, before the queen’s coffin is taken in a procession ringed by units of the armed forces in dress uniforms, with the queen’s children walking behind, to Wellington Arch near Hyde Park.
There, it will be placed in a hearse to be driven to Windsor for another procession along the Long Walk, a three-mile (five-kilometer) avenue leading to the town’s castle, before a committal service in St. George’s Chapel. She will then be laid to rest with her late husband, Prince Philip, at a private family service.