The King and Queen will celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary by spending the evening as guests of honour at a state banquet held in Rome.

Charles and Camilla will be joined by prominent figures from Italian society at the black-tie dinner hosted by Italy’s President Sergio Mattarella.

The event, which is part of the couple’s four-day state visit to Italy beginning on Monday, will mark two decades since the couple wed in a civil ceremony at Windsor Guildhall on April 9, 2005.

Charles and Camilla met in their early 20s at the Windsor Great Park polo field in 1970. Charles had just left Cambridge University and had not yet joined the Royal Navy.

However, no marriage proposal came despite the apparent closeness between the pair.

Camilla wed cavalry officer Andrew Parker Bowles in 1973 and Charles later married Diana, Princess of Wales in 1981. Charles and Camilla both divorced – and Diana died in 1997.

Charles and Camilla’s first public appearance together was outside the Ritz hotel in London in 1999, dubbed Operation Ritz, where the mass of waiting photographers had been tipped off.

At their wedding reception, held the same day as the Grand National, Queen Elizabeth II said about their romance: “They have overcome Becher’s Brook and The Chair and all kinds of other terrible obstacles. They have come through and I’m very proud and wish them well. “My son is home and dry with the woman he loves.”

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The King spent Friday making final preparations for the state visit to the Republic of Italy.

But because Pope Francis is recovering from a five-week, life-threatening bout of pneumonia, the state visit to the Holy See, the government of the Roman Catholic Church located in the Vatican has been postponed.

Several Vatican events have been removed from the itinerary in Rome, with the remaining engagements in the Italian capital spread over two days with extra elements added to others.

The historic overseas tour was due to be the King’s first meeting with the Pope as monarch and head of the Church of England.

As well as the King and Queen’s audience with the Pope, Charles was due to make history by becoming the first British monarch to visit the Papal Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls, the resting place of St Paul since the reformation.

During the state visit to Italy, he will become the first British sovereign to address both houses of the Italian parliament.