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Russian authorities are planning a series of ceremonies in and around the former imperial capital of Saint Petersburg to mark the reburial of the last tsar's mother next week.
A coffin carrying the remains of Maria Fyodorovna Romanova (1847-1928), who fled her beloved Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, will retrace the steps made by the Danish princess on her first trip to her new homeland.
The coffin will arrive on a Danish warship from Copenhagen at the Russian naval base of Kronshtadt on an island off the Baltic coast near Saint Petersburg on September 26.
Escorted by Danish and Russian officials, as well as representatives of the Romanov family, the coffin will then be taken to Peterhof, one of the summer residences of the Russian tsars.
After a religious ceremony, the coffin will lie in state until September 28 in Peterhof's Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, some 32 kilometres (20 miles) southeast of Saint Petersburg.
The coffin will then be driven to the Catherine Palace in the town of Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg where there will be another brief religious ceremony.
The procession will then drive through the streets of Saint Petersburg to Saint Isaac's cathedral in the city centre. There, Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II will hold a funeral service.
Finally, the funeral procession will travel to the Peter and Paul fortress on the Neva river, where another ceremony will mark Maria Fyodorovna's burial in the Romanov dynasty mausoleum.
All of Russia's tsars from Peter the Great (1672-1725) on are buried in the mausoleum, including Maria Fyodorovna's husband Alexander III and her son Nicholas II.
Descendants of the Romanov dynasty, members of other European royal families, as well as representatives of the Danish and Russian governments are expected to attend the ceremonies.
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AFP 231132 GMT 09 06
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