Queen Marie’s heart will finally find a proper and fitting resting place and peace that it deserves, the Romanian Royal Family intending to place it inside her former residence at the Pelishor Castle in Sinaia (in the Golden Room) on 3 November 2015.
Queen Marie of Romania at Pelishor Castle (DM collection)
According to Queen Marie’s last wish, her heart was to be buried separately, as in the medieval customs of which she was very found as a personality formed during Victorian times. The heart was first interred in the chapel ‘Stella Maris’ of her Black Sea palace in Balcic in 1938. After that area has been ceded to Bulgaria, the heart was re-interred by her daughter Princess Ileana in 1940 in ‘the chapel in the rock’, near Bran Castle, another property of Marie much loved by her, located in the Transylvanian Alps. The communist regime once again removed the heart from Bran and put it in storage at the National History Museum in Bucharest. Since 1940 the Queen’s heart was forced to ‘travel’ by the geopolitics of the region, reflecting the tormented history of the Balkans.
The Golden Room, Pelishor Castle, old photograph
For more details about Queen Marie’s heart: see my book ‘Marie of Romania. Images of a Queen’ (RRB, 2007) or “Balcicul Reginei Maria” (Curtea Veche, 2014).
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