{"id":845163,"date":"2026-09-12T10:10:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T10:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845163\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T10:10:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T10:10:18","slug":"queen-paola-at-89-the-royal-once-called-europes-most-beautiful-princess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845163\/","title":{"rendered":"Queen Paola at 89: The royal once called Europe\u2019s most beautiful princess"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paola of Belgium turns 89 this September 11: the Belgian press isn\u2019t publishing big special features on her, and so far the official channels also haven\u2019t marked the day with a new photo or a public gesture, as they tend to do when it\u2019s a milestone birthday. It\u2019s been a while since the woman who was queen consort for two decades stepped into the background; she suffered a stroke in 2018, from which she recovered, and now lives a quiet life between Belgium and the south of France.<\/p>\n

\"Queen\u00a9 Patrick van KatwijkHer public appearances are now rare; here she is with her husband, Albert II, and the current monarchs, her son, Philippe of the Belgians, and his wife, Queen Mathilde. The picture was taken in 2023 during National Day.<\/p>\n

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Together with her husband, Albert II, she has finally found the peace, happiness, companionship, and complicity that they didn\u2019t always have. Paola didn\u2019t have a reign that left a deep institutional footprint, but she did leave an undeniable human legacy: she has been one of the few European queens brave enough to say that life in a palace is not a fairy tale, that royal marriages also go through crises, silences, and painful wounds.<\/p>\n

Paola Ruffo di Calabria was 21 when she met then\u2011Prince Albert<\/a> in Rome, during a diplomatic reception with the Belgian embassy to the Holy See. Paola was an aristocrat who turned heads with her beauty; she was considered the most beautiful woman in Europe and was constantly compared to Princess Grace of Monaco.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Princess\u00a9 PhotonewsPrincess Paola of Belgium<\/p>\n

She came from one of the oldest and most distinguished families in Italy. They married nine months later, on July 2, 1959, in Brussels. He was 25; she was 22. In time, Paola would admit that everything happened \u201ctoo fast\u201d and that both of them lost their youth and their freedom along the way.<\/p>\n

Media pressure, the expectations placed on her as a future queen, official life, and motherhood shaped those early years, which Paola described as difficult and lonely. Although the couple was popular and photogenic, and although Albert\u2019s older brother, King Baudouin of Belgium, married to the Spaniard Fabiola de Mora y Arag\u00f3n, a much\u2011loved consort, was on the throne, Paola never managed to feel at ease in the role she was expected to play.<\/p>\n

\"Wedding\u00a9 REPORTERS ASSOCIESWedding of Prince Albert of Belgium with Donna Paola Ruffo Di Calabria in Brussels, Belgium, on July 2, 1959<\/p>\n

Official life, Albert\u2019s military duties, and constant public exposure kept happiness out of reach. While living at the Belvedere, their three children were born: Philippe, the current sovereign (1960), Astrid (1962), and Laurent\u00a0(1963), the only one who has also dared to say that he spent more of his childhood with tutors, nannies, and household staff than with his parents.<\/p>\n

Between 1970 and 1980, Paola went through what she herself called \u201cthe most unhappy years\u201d of her life. In the documentary Paola, c\u00f4t\u00e9 jardin, which aired in 2022 on Belgian public television, she spoke with total candor: institutional life was suffocating her, her marriage was going through profound crises, and there were infidelities on both sides.<\/p>\n

\"King\u00a9 PhotonewsKing Albert II and Queen Paola of Belgium at their Castle in Laeken (2008)<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also worth remembering that when Queen Paola spoke out, a court in Brussels, after a long legal battle, had already recognized that Albert II was the father of Delphine Bo\u00ebl, who went from being an illegitimate daughter to Princess of Belgium. Even so, Queen Paola\u2019s honesty about a subject royalty never talks about, her own infidelities and her deep sadness, gave a human face to an institution that had always preferred silence.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor ten years I was very, very unhappy. I was very sad and I felt very alone. I didn\u2019t know where to turn. And there was the danger of divorce, but in those days people didn\u2019t get divorced,\u201d recalled Queen Paola, speaking about a period that coincided with her children\u2019s childhood, a life stage that is often idealized and from which she stripped away any romanticism.<\/p>\n

\"Prince\u00a9 Patrick van KatwijkPrince Amedeo, Queen Paola, Crown Princess Elisabeth, Prince Nicolas of Belgium attend the 80th birthday celebrations of Belgian Queen Paola on June 29, 2017 in Waterloo, Belgium.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we talked about divorce, the lawyers told me that she would lose the children in the separation. It seemed unfair to me,\u201d King Albert himself explained in the documentary. That was when they decided to fight to move forward, and she remembers that one thing in particular pushed her to make that choice: something Albert II said to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe told me, \u2018I have always loved you.\u2019 It was so good to hear that again,\u201d said the queen, who also admitted that she would like to go back in time and do some things differently. \u201cOnly now do I realize how important it is to show enough affection. I am increasingly fascinated by the love I feel now. It\u2019s the love I wanted when I was 20, without social limitations, without borders,\u201d she explained. Perhaps Queen Paola\u2019s greatest legacy is that she has been a woman who never tried to airbrush the truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paola of Belgium turns 89 this September 11: the Belgian press isn\u2019t publishing big special features on her,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845164,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[357689,236,88,25696],"class_list":["post-845163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-belgian-royals","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-royals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}