Princely Couple inaugurates two new cannons at Fort Antoine
The Prince and Princess attended the inauguration of the two cannons, which date from 1881 © Prince's Palace
On Wednesday evening, two models dating from 1881 replaced an obsolete pair.
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The two 65mm cannons are back in service on the Fort Antoine esplanade, after almost a century. Prince Albert II and Princess Charlene each shot one, with noise-cancelling headphones over their ears.
Princess Charlène fired one of the two cannons, as did Prince Albert II a few minutes before © Prince’s Palace
The two new arrivals, replacing the two previous guns that had become obsolete and whose ammunition was no longer available, were previously in service for the Prince’s Carabinieri Corps from 1890 to 1926. Since then, they were kept in the Musée des Princes et de Leurs Gardes (Princes and their Guards Museum) at the Moneghetti barracks. “We had to make a decision about replacing the guns, and we didn’t want to go down the route of buying new ones. These guns needed to be remilitarised,” Lieutenant-Colonel Martial Pied told Monaco Info.
At the end of 2019, the Lieutenant-Colonel had contacted a French company, Munitique, with a view to putting these old models back into service. There were nearly three years of tests and research on suitable ammunition leading up to this inauguration. The recommissioning also served to implement a system with reusable casings. As work was carried out on the calibre of these guns, it was discovered that they were… Italian. They were used on National Day on Sunday.