Monaco says goodbye to Prince Rainier

BELOW a golden crown, Prince Rainier III was given a tearful farewell yesterday at a funeral in Monaco's cathedral.

It was the close a fairy tale that started nearly 50 years ago with his marriage in the same spot to Hollywood beauty Grace Kelly.

The pomp-filled, televised service for Rainier, who ruled Monaco for 56 of his 81 years, drew VIPs from around the world to the tiny, sun-kissed Mediterranean principality.

The fabled Monte Carlo casino was closed, as were other businesses, and security was tight as the funeral attracted more than half a dozen heads of state and other dignitaries from some 60 countries. They included President Mary McAleese, French President Jacques Chirac, Belgium's King Albert II, Spain's King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia and royalty from Sweden, Luxembourg and elsewhere.

The cathedral later was closed to the public for Rainier's burial in the family crypt alongside his beloved Princess Grace at a private service last night. She died in a car crash in 1982. Rainier never remarried.

Their children - son and heir Prince Albert II, and Princesses Caroline and Stephanie - blinked back tears during the Mass as Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings mournfully echoed through the 19th cathedral that overlooks the sea.

Rainier's coffin was draped in a white and red flag bearing the coat of arms of his Grimaldi family. It includes the royal motto "Deo Juvante" - "With God's Help" - and two monks brandishing raised swords, a reminder of how the Grimaldis seized this rock in 1297. Rainier was Europe's longest-serving monarch.

The royals, nobles and other VIPs who flew in for the funeral underscored how he helped overcome Monaco's reputation as a "sunny place for shady people" and a haven for tax evasion, money-laundering and gambling, and oversaw its modernisation.

In his eulogy at the Mass, Archbishop Bernard Barsi said Rainier was affectionately known as the "builder prince" who oversaw a 20% expansion in Monaco's territory by land reclamation from the sea. It still remains, however, no bigger than New York City's Central Park.

"For all of us, the prince was, of course, the sovereign, but he was also a friend, a member of the family," Archbishop Barsi said. "His family cries for him."

But it was Rainier's 1956 marriage to Kelly that became Monaco's true claim to fame.

The archbishop said they were "an exceptional couple, united by the heart and spirit" and that Rainier bore "with dignity the terrible ordeal of the brutal death of his wife."

The service began when members of the 170-member staff carried his coffin from the palace's 17th-century Palatine Chapel, where he had lain in state since his death on April 6 of heart, kidney and breathing problems.

In accordance with Rainier's wishes, soldiers from the Prince's Company of Carabineers, red and white plumes on their blue hats, then carried his coffin out of the palace via the Gate of Honour.