Prince Edward and Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, just became the first royal family members to set foot inside Villa Guardamangia—Queen Elizabeth’s onetime home in Malta—since 1951. Per People, the duke and duchess stopped by the historic palazzo during a visit commemorating the 60th anniversary of the island nation’s independence. In 1949, when Queen Elizabeth was still a newlywed princess, she and Philip began their two-year tenancy in the six-bedroom, three-bathroom villa while Philip served in the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean fleet.
Notably, the two-story limestone structure, located in the Maltese town of Pietà, was the only place outside of the UK that Queen Elizabeth ever called home. Ben Pimlott, the author of The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II, wrote that her time at Villa Guardamangia offered the future queen “comparative privacy and freedom from official duties” was the “most ‘normal’ of her entire life.”
“The villa had separate apartments for the prince and the princess, each including a bedroom, walk-in wardrobe, an anteroom, and a bathroom,” Heritage Malta curator Kenneth Gambin told Reuters during a tour of the neoclassical-style residence. The roughly 16,000-square-foot home also featured a grand hall warmed by a fireplace, servants’ quarters on the ground floor, and numerous balconies with ornate wrought-iron railings.