King Charles III’s state visit this week includes a stop in Virginia, where he is set to attend a quintessential American event: a block party. It will not be the first time the British monarch has immersed himself in American traditions.
As the Prince of Wales, he sat front row at a Major League Baseball game, rode on San Francisco’s cable cars and stopped by a farmers’ market. He attended a college football game in Georgia and a barbecue at Camp David.
Here are some highlights from Charles’s trips to the United States throughout his life:
A guest of the Nixons
Like many fresh college graduates, Charles embarked on an overseas trip after leaving Cambridge University at 21. His first visit to the United States in the summer of 1970 was an informal trip at the invitation of President Richard M. Nixon’s daughters, Tricia and Julie.
The Nixons hosted Charles and his sister, Princess Anne, at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, where they grilled steaks and corn on the cob. He ran down the Washington Monument’s nearly 900 steps with David Eisenhower, Julie Nixon’s husband, and took in a Washington Senators baseball game with Tricia Nixon.
Charles was not enthralled by America’s pastime, Mr. Eisenhower said.
“I had to explain the game to him; he didn’t know anything about it,” Mr. Eisenhower recalled in an interview with The Guardian newspaper published this week. “And second, this was mid-July, and in the afternoon, so you can imagine how hot it was.”
A cross-country tour
Charles made his first official visit to the United States when he was nearly 29 and “probably the most popular man in Britain,” as The New York Times put it in 1977.
His tour included Chicago, Cleveland, St. Louis and Atlanta, where he became the first British royal to attend a collegiate American football game (the Georgia Bulldogs lost to the Kentucky Wildcats, 33-0).
His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, had visited New York City, Philadelphia and Washington a year earlier.
“I’m visiting the places she missed, which is most of the United States,” he said.
His last stop was San Francisco, getting on one of the city’s iconic cable cars. Police officers in riot gear surrounded him on the ride, as protesters who sympathized with the independence movement in Northern Ireland mixed with crowds eager to see the prince.
An evening in New York
Charles made an overnight stop in New York City in June 1981, arriving on the Concorde from Britain. Nancy Reagan, the first lady, joined him on a cruise around the Statue of Liberty.
His trip coincided with the 206th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, a pivotal event in the American Revolution, and Charles joked: “We always make sure a good representative comes on these occasions.”
Later, he attended a ballet performance of “Sleeping Beauty,” which was interrupted by four Irish Republican Army supporters who heckled Charles. Two years earlier, members of the group had assassinated his great-uncle and mentor, Earl Mountbatten, a British war hero.
Visits with Diana
When Charles returned to the United States in 1985, it was his wife, Diana, who drew crowds. They visited a J.C. Penney department store, and she danced with John Travolta at a state dinner at the White House.
The Prince and Princess of Wales had been married for four years and welcomed sons William and Harry, but rumors of marital discord were swirling, according to The Times.
Four years later, Charles made a solo trip to Washington. He met with Vice President Dan Quayle, discussing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Soviet Union, which was on the brink of collapse.
Diana had paid a separate trip to New York two weeks earlier to visit a shelter for the homeless and a hospital for children with AIDS. A spokeswoman for the British Embassy denied at the time that there was a rift between the couple.
They divorced in August 1996.
Introducing Camilla
Charles visited the United States in November 2005 with Camilla Parker-Bowles, his longtime partner whom he had married a few months earlier. The new Duchess of Cornwall showed good humor when she was badgered by tabloid photographers in New York.
The royal couple visited Washington, San Francisco and New Orleans, walking through streets that had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina months earlier.
A speech on the environment
Charles’s last U.S. visit as the Prince of Wales was in 2018 for the state funeral of former President George H.W. Bush. Three years earlier, he had met with President Barack Obama in the White House and visited Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington.
Charles, a longtime advocate for environmental protection and sustainability, raised the alarm on climate change in a speech at the Cathedral of the Assumption in Louisville, Ky. “In failing the Earth,” he said, “We are failing humanity.”
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
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