Italian royals return home

The descendants of Italy’s last king today said they were overjoyed at the prospect of returning to their homeland following the failure of a petition that would have kept them in exile.

Victor Emmanuel, the son of the late king, and his family uncorked champagne bottles at their stately Lake Geneva home a day after a group trying to collect the 500,000 signatures necessary to call a referendum said it was only able to get about 21,000.

“It seems like a dream,” said Victor Emmanuel, who was nine when he left Italy in 1946 and was later barred from returning after Italians voted to ban the male heirs of the House of Savoy from the country.

His 30-year-old son, Emmanuel Filiberto, was born and raised in Switzerland and has never set foot in Italy.

Asked what they wanted to do upon their return to Italy, Emmanuel Filiberto replied: “We have everything to do. From eating a pizza in Naples harbour to seeing the Pantheon where our ancestors are buried.”

The family has renounced any claim to the throne and has long claimed the ban was a human rights violation.

They say they will return as “normal citizens”.

On May 9, 1946, Victor Emmanuel III abdicated in favour of his son Umberto II. But Umberto lasted only a month before a referendum in which Italians voted to scrap the monarchy and make the country a republic.

Two years later, the republic’s new constitution barred Umberto and his male descendants from Italy – a punishment for the Savoys’ support of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.