By Sean Coughlan
Royal correspondent
Historic medieval flooring, astatine the nonstop spot wherever King Charles volition beryllium crowned wrong Westminster Abbey, is going to beryllium opened to visitors - arsenic agelong arsenic they instrumentality disconnected their shoes.
Abbey authorities accidental this volition beryllium the archetypal clip successful surviving representation that the nationalist volition person been capable to locomotion crossed the "Cosmati pavement".
The mosaic is claimed arsenic 1 of Britain's top medieval treasures.
But visitors volition person to deterioration socks to support the 13th Century surface.
At the centre of the medieval mosaic is simply a polished chromatic ellipse with a swirling pattern, surrounded by rings of designs successful glass, marble and coloured stone, and this is wherever the coronation seat volition beryllium placed erstwhile King Charles is crowned connected 6 May.
Since the 19th Century, the richly-decorated but alternatively battered level had been covered up with carpets - including for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation successful 1953 - oregon roped disconnected from nationalist access.
But the intricate mosaic, claimed arsenic the astir important illustration of this benignant extracurricular Italy, volition beryllium revealed for the coronation of King Charles, with the 700-year-old coronation seat being placed successful the centre of the floor.
For 10 weeks aft the coronation, from 15 May to 29 July, visitors volition beryllium capable to locomotion crossed the Cosmati pavement and basal connected the spot wherever centuries of royal coronations person taken place.
Standing successful their socks - bare feet volition not beryllium allowed to debar the level getting "sticky" - visitors would beryllium capable to get the presumption that King Charles had, looking towards the precocious altar with the congregation and choir down him.
The Abbey, expecting a precocious request for this one-off experience, said the visits indispensable beryllium pre-booked, with radical allowed connected to the flooring successful tiny groups, arsenic portion of a £15 guided tour.
But this week the tract was besides concisely occupied by anti-monarchy protesters, who walked connected to the Cosmati pavement, wearing shoes, and held up a banner.
A spokesperson for run radical Republic, which has called for the abolition of the monarchy, criticised the coronation arsenic a "pointless parade" that would enactment up an "unelected caput of state".
The medieval level has had painstaking restoration work, taking disconnected centuries of grime, but the Abbey's caput conservator Vanessa Simeoni says overmuch of the chromatic is original.
She said that moving connected the historical level gives her a existent consciousness of continuity with the archetypal trade workers who laid the mosaic 750 years ago.
"It's perfectly amazing. I ever consciousness a transportation with the radical who made these objects. They knew their materials, they knew their designs," says the conservator.
Working connected the stones she says the conservators tin spot antithetic techniques that were being tried by their medieval forebears, specified arsenic a mode of waterproofing and keeping retired the damp that the Italians moving successful London had developed.
The floor, named aft the Italian craftsmen who created it, was commissioned by Henry III and completed successful 1268. It's a quadrate of astir 7.5 metres, with a plan of interlocking patterns, utilizing inlaid stones, specified arsenic purple-coloured porphyry and yellowish limestone.
When it was archetypal laid, the marble, solid and coloured stones would person been highly polished, truthful that the level would person shimmered successful the candlelight.
Ms Simeoni said that arsenic good arsenic Italian and section English materials, the level includes stones from Egypt, Greece and Turkey.
Many of the pieces of chromatic and marble utilized successful the level were taken from Roman ruins and recycled by Italian craftsmen who brought them to Britain, she added.
It means that the coronations of monarchs successful Westminster Abbey person taken spot for centuries connected a aboveground built from the fragments of an adjacent older Roman Empire.