Prince Edward and Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh Visit Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s Malta Home

Prince Edward and Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh are following in Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip‘s footsteps in Malta.

The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh are in Malta this week for a four-day visit to commemorate the 60th anniversary of its independence and celebrate the country’s shared heritage and continued collaboration with the United Kingdom. Prince Edward’s parents, the late Queen and Prince Philip, lived in Malta as newlyweds while Philip served with the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean fleet, and he and his wife returned to their former home on Oct. 9.

Then-Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip lived at Villa Guardamangia in Valletta from 1949 to 1951 during his service, an era which biographer Ben Pimlott has described as the “most ‘normal’ of her entire life” and then-private secretary Mike Parker called a “fabulous period.”

Prince Edward, 60, and Sophie, 59, became the first members of the royal family to return to Villa Guardamangia since 1951, the Telegraph reported, and tour the palazzo-style mansion being restored by the Maltese government.

The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh retraced his parents’ footsteps throughout the villa and recreated an iconic snapshot of the future Queen and Prince Philip on the rooftop. They were accompanied on the tour by Elizabeth Pulé, whose mother Jessie worked as a housekeeper at  Villa Guardamangia when the royals lived there, and Edward said that the late Queen always remembered her.

“Your mother was very popular,” Prince Edward told Elizabeth. “I know that my mother spotted her in the crowds several times [while visiting Malta], she never forgot her.”

The Telegraph reported that a small crowd convened during Edward and Sophie’s visit to the villa, “some curious and holding phones, others eager to pay respects in some way to the late Queen.” The tiny island of Malta was the only place Queen Elizabeth called home outside of the U.K. during her long life, and that fact is considered a point of pride among local people.

The six-bedroom, three-bath home (which was originally rented by Prince Philip’s beloved uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten) eventually fell into disrepair. It was bought by the government of Malta and entrusted to Heritage Malta in 2020 for a major renovation costing over an estimated $10 million. Project plans said that the refurbished site will one day highlight Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s experience in Malta. 

In the 2012 biography The Queen, Pimlott writes that Malta was a “haven of comparative privacy and freedom from official duties” for the future Queen Elizabeth. She relished in her role as a service wife (albeit one with a team of servants) while she left her 1-year-old son, the future King Charles, at the royal nursery and with his maternal grandparents, King George VI and the Queen Mother, back in Sandringham at Christmas time.

Then-Princess Elizabeth — who was then styled as the Duchess of Edinburgh, as Sophie is known today — announced she was pregnant with Princess Anne there in April 1950 and returned home to Clarence House in London in order to give birth in August of that year.

Queen Elizabeth’s life changed when she acceded to the throne at age 25 in 1952 upon the sudden death of her father, though Malta forever kept a special place in her heart. She traveled back several times in the years that followed and paid what proved to be her final visit in 2015 for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

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Prince Edward and Sophie were welcomed to Malta by President Myriam Spiteri Debono on Oct. 7, and other outings they have made so far include a wreath-laying to honor lives lost in World War II, meeting with members of the Maltese-U.K. Veterans’ Association and stop at the Duke of Edinburgh International Award’s new local headquarters for Prince Edward.