Malta bids Prince Philip farewell with flowers, nine-gun salute

Malta, on Saturday, paid tribute to Britain’s late Prince Philip with flowers and a nine-cannon salute just as the late Duke of Edinburgh was due to be laid to rest
Members of the public and a World War II re-enactment group laid flowers at the foot of Villa Guardamangia, a large neoclassical villa in Malta where Philip and his young bride Princess Elizabeth lived for the better part of two years.
A few kilometres away in Valletta, a nine-cannon salute was fired from the Grand Harbour’s saluting battery, one shot for each of the prince’s nine decades of life.

Some shop windows across the country featured posters of the late prince, as flags at private residences flew at half-mast.
The royal couple moved to Malta in 1949 when Philip was stationed as a naval officer aboard the HMS Chequers.
Queen Elizabeth II has described those years as being among the “happiest of her life” and the couple’s time in Malta features in the first episode of the Netflix hit series “The Crown.”
Philip’s ties to Malta continued to be strong throughout the rest of his life: it was Philip who formally handed the independence documents to Malta’s then prime minister George Borg Olivier in September 1964 and he and the queen returned several times to the island, selecting it as their destination to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary in 2007.