Prince Albert II of Monaco was in the Pantheon between Emmanuel Macron and Brian Bouillon-Baker
Prince Albert II of Monaco was present this Tuesday at the Pantheon for the entry of Josephine Baker, the day after the national tribute ceremony organized in the Principality.
He was seated at the first bell. Between Brian Bouillon-Baker, one of Joséphine Baker’s sons, and the President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron. Prince Albert II of Monaco among the personalities present, this Tuesday, November 30, 2021, see the famous Franco-American music-hall artist, authorized and anti-racist activist, join the great French figures who are honored in this place of memory of the capital for their talents, their virtues or their services to the fatherland.
To have: In pictures: Joséphine Baker’s entry to the Pantheon
The Monegasque sovereign himself knew Joséphine Baker well. He was 11 years old when his mother Princess Grace of Monaco, a former Hollywood star, came to the aid of his compatriot who, in ruins, had had to leave his home, the Château des Milandes in the Dordogne, where she lived with her flock of children who ‘she had adopted. Thanks to the wife of Prince Rainier III, Joséphine Baker settled with her family in a villa in Roquebrune Cap Martin overlooking the Mediterranean, a stone’s throw from the Rock. It was in Monaco that she returned to the stage in 1974. And it is in the Monaco cemetery that she rests forever, alongside her husband and one of their sons.
Prince Albert II took the land from Monaco himself
The artist’s remains are in fact kept in the Principality. In the Pantheon, a cenotaph (tomb not containing the body) will be installed this Wednesday in vault 13 of the crypt, where the writer Maurice Genevoix is already located. Cenotaph in which is symbolically placed earth from the four places dear to her heart: Saint-Louis in Missouri where she was born, Paris where she was successful, Les Milandes where she had installed her “rainbow tribe”. sky ”as she herself defined her 12 sons and daughters brought back all over the world, and finally Monaco, the place of her personal and professional rebirth. This Monegasque land, it was Prince Albert II, in person, who took it with a small hand shovel in the flower bed located just next to the tomb of Joséphine Baker, this Monday, November 29, during a national tribute ceremony organized in the Principality.
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