• The funeral of Queen Elizabeth II takes place today in London and Windsor


  • Several heads of state made the trip


  • It is the first state funeral in the UK since that of Winston Churchill in 1965

The funeral of Queen Elizabeth II is heralded as one of the major events of the century, and the magnitude of this day is confirmed in numbers.

First, the number of guests and their stature.

2,000 people were invited to Westminster Abbey to attend the religious service.

Among them, the main heads of state of the Western world and their respective spouses, who arrived… by bus.

Members of the main royal families also made the trip, as did British politicians and personalities who received the highest honors in the United Kingdom.

With such high-profile guests (and potential targets for the most ill-intentioned), security is on high alert in London.

Maximum security

More than 10,000 police officers have been added to the usual workforce, says

The Guardian

.

The Metropolitan Police said it was the "largest deployment of police officers" for an event, "bigger than the 2012 Olympics and the Platinum Jubilee".

London is not the only city to have revised its security service upwards.

Windsor, where Queen Elizabeth II will rest, has also called for reinforcements: 2,000 officers have been deployed in the city, which has put in place “security measures of the same style as in an airport”.

In addition, in central London, barriers over 35 kilometers to contain the crowd.

And many of them arrived, some as early as last night, to see the funeral procession in the streets of the British capital and pay tribute to Elizabeth II.

Public transport (TfL) awaits around a million people wishing to reach Westminster Abbey and its surroundings.

250 additional trains will run to London.

Also, a hundred commercial flights were canceled at Heathrow airport, near Windsor, to avoid noise pollution during the funeral ceremony.

Millions of pounds

Finally, such an organization obviously has a cost.

The last funeral of such a scale in the UK took place 20 years ago, in 2002, when the Queen Mother died.

They had cost 5.4 million pounds sterling (about 6.15 million euros) and it was not a state funeral.

As the

Big Issue

relays , the security amounted to 4.3 million pounds sterling (about 4.9 million euros).

The meditation of the public in front of the coffin had cost 825,000 pounds sterling (about 940,000 euros).

By comparison, the police deployed for the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton had cost more than 6 million pounds sterling (about 6.8 million euros).

The funeral of Elizabeth II should cost even more.

People

Several celebrities were invited to the funeral ceremony of Elizabeth II

Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II LIVE: "She was joyful, she touched a multitude of lives", greets the Archbishop of Canterbury

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