Catherine, Princess of Wales, arrived in Italy on Wednesday for her first official overseas engagement since her battle with cancer was revealed in 2024.
The trip to Reggio Emilia, a city widely known for its hands-on, child-first approach to early childhood learning, was being billed by Kensington Palace as a chance for the princess to explore innovative international approaches to nurturing young children, a subject she cares about deeply.
But for the rest of the world, royal watchers said, the visit signals that she is ready to return to business as usual more than a year after she announced that her cancer was in remission.
“It’s the first time she’s out officially,” said Richard Fitzwilliams, a British royal commentator. “And she’s obviously grown in strength.”
Her trip follows closely after a successful state visit to the United States by her father-in-law, King Charles III, who received a cancer diagnosis just weeks before Catherine announced her own illness.
The two cancer diagnoses caused deep anxiety in Britain, and now the back-to-back overseas trips appear to show the royal family returning more fully to normal activities. The king recently announced that his doctors planned to begin scaling back his treatment, the first genuine ray of hope for the monarch’s health since early 2024.
Catherine, 44, never disclosed the type of cancer she faced. Last year, she was again in the spotlight, at least in Britain, presenting awards, attending functions and watching tennis at Wimbledon.
But the visit to Reggio Emilia marks a new level of engagement.
Catherine has long made early childhood learning the focus of her philanthropic efforts. She founded the Royal Foundation Center for Early Childhood in 2021.On May 6, the same day the palace announced that she would travel to Italy, the center released a guide focused on social and emotional development and meant to support those who work with young children and families.
“While our society often focuses on academic or physical milestones,” she wrote in a forward to the guide, “research consistently shows that it is our earliest relationships, experiences and environments which lay the foundations for our future health and happiness.”
Reggio Emilia has long been a model for educators looking to teach children by focusing on their relationships, their enthusiasm and their play.
There, the palace said, she will meet with parents, children, educators and others as she looks to other countries for innovative approaches to early childhood enrichment.
How did the Reggio Emilia schools start?
The so-called Reggio Emilia Approach is an educational philosophy that believes in the potential of young children, from infants to preschoolers, to be creative, learn and thrive in a nurturing environment that involves their families and communities.
It took root after World War II, when local women used the proceeds from the sale of a tank, six horses and some trucks to build a preschool. A network of municipal infant-toddler centers and preschools followed, inspired by Loris Malaguzzi, an education expert intent on making them places of experimentation and innovation.
After Newsweek featured a Reggio Emilia school in a 1991 cover piece about the ten best schools in the world, international interest grew and thousands of educators from dozens of countries came to Reggio Emilia to see for themselves, said Marwa Mahmoud, the city’s councilor for education.
The city’s commitment to the program — it allocates 13 percent of its budget to preschool services, Ms. Mahmoud said — also contributes to its success.
“We’ve always maintained that education — as well as health and health care — should not be viewed as costs. It is right to evaluate them in terms of efficiency and waste reduction, but they are not costs — they are investments in the present and the future,” said Marco Massari, the mayor of Reggio Emilia.
What is the Reggio Emilia approach?
A popular tenet of the approach is that children are curious learners from birth.
Classrooms are full of light and natural materials and are organized around communal spaces known as piazzas, where children are encouraged to explore, touch and create. Children participate in ‘ateliers’ using materials like paint and clay as means of self-expression.
Each day begins with what Malaguzzi called “the children’s parliament,” a moment when children are encouraged to speak and listen and the day’s activities are decided.
The children work in small groups, learning together, “so there are no me and others, but a continuous interaction between the me and the others to build a we,” said Maddalena Tedeschi, president of Reggio Children, an international center that researches and promotes the approach.
What will Catherine do in Reggio Emilia?
Over two days, the Princess of Wales will get a crash course in the Reggio Emilia approach, stopping at the Loris Malaguzzi International Center to learn about the underlying philosophy and visiting two schools to see it in practice.
She will also visit a recycling center that preps materials for school crafts and meet with educators, city administrators, parents and residents. “She actually asked to meet the teachers, the children, and their parents, and participate in an everyday situation,” Ms. Tedeschi said.
Elisabetta Povoledo is a Times reporter based in Rome, covering Italy, the Vatican and the culture of the region. She has been a journalist for 35 years.
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