11 pictures of midnight coronation rehearsal and military parade through empty London streets

The first rehearsal for the King’s Coronation took place as military paraded through the quiet streets of central London in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

The rehearsal was due to start at 10pm on Monday but was delayed, before hundreds of military personnel followed the route on horseback preparing for the coronation on May 6.

Charles and the Queen Consort will make their way back from Westminster Abbey via Parliament Square, along Whitehall, around Trafalgar Square, through Admiralty Arch and down The Mall back to Buckingham Palace.

The coronation procession stretches to just 1.3 miles – around a quarter of the length of the late Queen’s five-mile celebratory journey which went through Piccadilly, Oxford Street and Regent Street.

The grand procession in 1953 took two hours and featured tens of thousands of participants, with the two-and-a-half mile cavalcade taking 45 minutes to pass any given point.

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