Sophie Wessex visibly moved as she honours late Queen with touching gesture

The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh are currently on a trip to Malta and today they visited the villa near the capital Valletta, where the late Queen and Prince Philip lived for several years when they were a young married couple

The Duchess of Edinburgh looked visibly moved as she and Prince Edward honoured the late Queen on a touching visit during a trip to Malta.

Both Edward and Sophie recreated pictures of the former monarch and her husband Prince Philip, that were taken more than 70 years ago as they visited the Maltese villa where they lived as newlyweds.

The Edinburghs toured Villa Guardamangia today and heard about restoration work taking place on the former residence of Queen Elizabeth II and Philip when they were a young married couple. The couple lived there between 1949 and 1951 while the prince was stationed in Malta as a serving Royal Navy officer.

The couple recreated a photo taken of the late Queen and Prince Philip at the villa in 1949 (
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PA)

The couple are on a four-day trip to Malta (
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Edward and Sophie met Elizabeth Pule whose mother, Jessie, was a housekeeper when the late Queen and Philip lived in the villa on the outskirts of the capital Valletta. Edward told her: “I know that my mother spotted your mother in a crowd when she came on a visit. She never forgot her.”

The pair were taken on a tour of the house during which they walked through an exhibition of photos of the late Queen and Philip set up in the garden. Edward and Sophie waved at two people who were stood on the balcony of a different property overlooking the garden.

The duke and duchess were left alone at the top end of the garden, near a derelict fountain, to have a private moment, chatting among themselves and taking in their surroundings. Bells sounded midway through the tour, which were rung specially by a local priest in honour of the couple’s visit.

The pair enjoy the views from the villa’s balcony (
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Edward and Sophie finished the tour by posing for a photo on the villa’s roof and were asked to swap positions to recapture a famous photo of the late Queen and Philip taken on the same roof decades ago.

Giancarlo Azzopardi, assistant curator at Heritage Malta, said there is an ‘attachment’ between the villa and the British royal family. “Specifically with the older generation that remembers Malta as a British colony and later as a British base, there’s always that attachment,” he said. “Obviously, there’s a nostalgic element and then you obviously have the celebrity status of the royal family, so there is that link.”

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He said it was meaningful to have the duke and duchess visiting the property on Wednesday. “It always pulls a crowd,” Mr Azzopardi said. “We get people knocking on the door – ideally they don’t do that – unfortunately we can’t let anyone in but we do get a bit of fans.”

He also told of a ‘misconception’ that the late Queen was living in Malta as a ‘regular sailor’s wife’. He said: “The princess was living here at a time when there was a question about whether or not independence was going to happen and the princess was at work putting on a public image for Britain, for post-war Britain.

“Despite the idea, the misconception, that she was here as a regular sailor’s wife, she was quite busy. Every single day she was at an event.”

Heritage Malta has been granted around 10 million euros (£8.4 million) to restore the dilapidated property and plans to refurbish it as a 1950s house by 2030/31.