Vote for republic forced King's daughter to leave
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| Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Parma, pictured in 1963 |
Princess Maria Pia of Bourbon-Parma was born into the
Italian royal family on this day in 1934, the grand-daughter of King Victor
Emmanuel III.
Her father, Umberto of Savoy, would himself become King on
her grandfather’s abdication but reigned for just 34 days in 1946 before Italy
voted to become a republic and the royals were effectively thrown out of the
country.
Italians could not forgive Victor Emmanuel III for not doing enough to limit the power of the Fascists and for approving Benito Mussolini’s anti-semitic
race laws. The constitution of the new republic decreed that no male member
of the House of Savoy could set foot in Italy ever again.
It meant that Princess Maria Pia, the eldest of Umberto’s
four children, had to leave Italy immediately along with her brother and two
sisters and all the other members of the family, bringing to an abrupt end the
life she had known until that moment.
Born in Naples, where the Villa Rosebery, once the property
of the British prime minister, the Earl of Rosebery, had been renamed Villa
Maria Pia by her doting father, the 11-year-old princess was removed to Cascais
in Portugal.
When her parents separated almost immediately after leaving
Italy – as strict Catholics, Umberto and Marie-José never divorced – she divided
her time between Portugal and her mother’s home in Switzerland.
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| Princess Maria Pia of Savoy, as she was then, pictured with her first husband, Alexander of Yugoslavia |
This changed in 1954 after she was invited to a cruise
hosted by Queen Frederica of Greece on the yacht Agamemnon, where she met
Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia. They
were married the following year and settled in Paris.
They had four children – two sets of twins, born in 1958 and
1963 – and lived a comfortable life.
Maria Pia was much photographed and came to be regarded as a symbol of
Italian style. Unlike the males in the
Savoy line, she was allowed to return to Italy, where she was a regular customer
of the Sorelle Fontana fashion house in Rome and would buy shoes from Alberto
Dal Cò, the uncle of the three Fontana sisters.
She also wore dresses designed by her fellow Neapolitan,
Emilio Schuberth, and would go to Capri to the boutique of Emilio Pucci.
For a while she was a model for Vogue magazine and worked as
a journalist on another magazine, Novella 2000, revealing a talent for writing
she claimed she inherited from her mother.
Among the many people she interviewed was the artist
Salvador Dalì, with whom she became close friends.
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| Princess Maria Pia is still actively involved with charities |
Like that of her parents, however, her marriage to Prince
Alexander ultimately broke down. They
divorced in 1967.
By that time she had begun an affair with Prince Michel of
Bourbon-Parma and was already living with him when she and Alexander divorced.
They have remained together since, although they were not married until 2003.
Michel, whose ancestry goes back to the establishment of the
House of Bourbon-Parma in Italy in 1731, had been separated from his first
wife, Yolande of Broglie-Revel, since 1966 but they did not divorce until 1999.
He and Maria Pia were married in a civil ceremony in
Manalapan, Florida, close to the mansion they owned in Palm Beach.
In recent years they have divided their time between homes
in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside Paris, and Palm Beach, although the
91-year-old Michel has recently become too frail to leave France.
Unlike her brother, Vittorio Emanuele, who did the reputation
of the family no good in various scandals, Maria Pia had led a life free from
controversy and is recognised, in Florida in particular, for her work with
charities and her keen interest in promoting the preservation of the historic,
architectural and cultural heritage of Palm Beach.
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| The Villa Rosebery overlooks the sea at Marechiaro |
Travel tip:
The Villa Rosebery, which sits in 16.3 acres (6.6 hectares)
of land in Marechiaro on the northern side of the Bay of Naples, came into the possession
of the 5th Earl of Rosebery, the former Liberal prime minister of
Great Britain, in 1897. In 1909, he presented
the building to the British government for the use of the British Ambassador to
Italy. In 1932 the British government in turn presented the building to the
Italian State and the villa was used as a summer royal residence until the
royal family were exiled in 1946. It was
then used by the Accademia Aeronautica until 1949, after which it was
unoccupied until it became an official residence of the President of the
Italian Republic in 1957.
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| Piazza di Spagna, viewed from the Spanish Steps |
Travel tip:
The House of Fontana still exists today, with its
headquarters close to Piazza di Spagna, one of the most famous squares in Rome,
situated at the foot of the much-photographed Spanish Steps. The square and
steps take their name from the Embassy of Spain, situated close by. The steps
were built to provide access from the embassy to the church of Trinità dei
Monti.
thanks so much this will help me with my project
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