Human Interest

About 250,000 people visited Queen Elizabeth II lying in state

London, Sep 20 (EFE).- Some 250,000 came to view Queen Elizabeth II’s coffin while the late monarch was lying in state at Westminster Hall ahead of her state funeral, the British culture minister Michelle Donelan said Tuesday.

In an interview with Sky News, Donelan said that her ministry was still “crunching those final numbers,” but the approximate figure was around a quarter of a million.

In April 2002, around 200,000 people attended the lying-in-state of the Queen Mother who died that year on March 30 and whose funeral was also held at Westminster Abbey.

After her state funeral on Monday, Elizabeth II was laid to rest next to her late husband Prince Philip at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, about 40 kilometers away from London.

The late monarch died on September 8 at age 96 in her Balmoral residency in Scotland.

Donelan did not give an exact figure for the cost of the funeral, but she defended the expense saying that “the taxpayer would argue that it’s money well spent.”

Even as the national period of mourning has ended, the royal family is to observe seven more days of grieving in which public acts are not to be held and flags at royal residences will remain at half mast.

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