#6 - JRL 7266
BBC Monitoring
Head of royal House of Romanov wishes she could live in Russia
Source: Centre TV, Moscow, in Russian 1400 gmt 23 Jul 03
Excerpt of report by Russian Centre TV on 23 July

[Presenter] In several days Russia will be marking 100th anniversary of canonizing Saint Serafim of Sarov. His relics are in the Serafimo-Diveyev convent and a flow of pilgrims there never stops. Princess Mariya Romanova, the head of the House of Romanov, will be one of them soon. At present she is travelling along the Volga River. Our correspondent reports from Saratov.

[Correspondent Aleksandr Adrianov] There are no memorial sites related to the history of the Romanov family in Saratov, nevertheless two hours have been allocated on the agenda of Her Highness' trip along Volga to be spent in this town. [Passage omitted]

Princess Romanova lives in Madrid with her mother and her son. In the last 12 years she has visited the motherland of her grandfather for the 40th time.

[Mariya Romanova, the head of the Russian House of Romanov speaks in Russian, captioned] Everything what my parents told me about their wonderful motherland is true. It is so nice to be here, I feel like a part, a small part of this. I wish I could come here to stay.

[Correspondent] Mariya Romanova was in Saratov 10 years ago but she had not had a chance to do any sightseeing then. The great-niece of the last Russian tsar is travelling on a tourist ship up Volga. This time she has come to Russia to attend the ceremony of opening a new church [the Cathedral on the Blood] on the site where the family of the last Tsar of Russia - Nicholas II - was shot dead [by the Bolsheviks in 1918]. The last point of her trip is visiting the relics of Saint Serafim of Sarov in the convent in Nizhniy Novgorod Region.

[Video report shows the Princess speaking, sights in Samara]