Westminster Abbey to offer barefoot tours

LONDON – People who visit London’s Westminster Abbey after the coronation of King Charles III will be allowed to stand on the exact spot where he was crowned, but they will need to make sure they don’t have holes in their socks for the shoeless tour, designed to protect the abbey’s medieval mosaic floor.

Abbey officials said Friday that the section of the church’s floor known as the Cosmati pavement, where the chair in which Britain’s monarchs are crowned has been placed for some 700 years, will be on display during Charles’ May 6 coronation after being hidden away under carpets for decades because of disrepair.

The pavement area, normally roped off to the public, will be open to small guided “barefoot tours” after the crowning ceremony. Visitors will be asked to remove their shoes to avoid wear and tear to the floor, which was restored to its former glory after a twoyear conservation project was completed in 2010.

“Standing on the pavement and feeling that sense of awe of being in the central part of the abbey is a really amazing experience,” said Scott Craddock, the head of visitor experience at the famous church. “It will give people the opportunity to feel what it’s like being at that center stage of the coronation.”

King Henry III commissioned the intricate mosaic of marble, stone, glass and metal, located in front of the abbey’s high altar, in the 1200s. Italian craftsmen and English masons made it.

It is where English – and, later, British – coronations have taken place ever since, but the area was covered by carpet at many previous coronations, including those of Elizabeth II in 1953 and her father, George VI, in 1937.

The mosaic is said to be the best surviving example outside Italy of a rare type of stonework known as “Cosmati,” after the Italian family that created it.

“It’s a unique piece of art to Westminster Abbey but also to Britain itself – there are no other mosaic pavements like this in the U.K.,” said Vanessa Simeoni, the abbey’s head conservator.

Experts from the abbey will guide the tours, which will run on some days from May 15 to July 29.

JONATHAN BRADY/PA VIA AP Abbey Marshal Howard Berry walks across the center of the Cosmati pavement at Westminster Abbey in London. Members of the public will be able to tour the spot – as long as they take their shoes off first.