Royal Entry

The Royal Entry, also known by various other names, including Triumphal Entry and Joyous Entry, embraced the ceremonial and festivities accompanying a formal entry by a ruler or his representative into a city in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period in Europe. The entry centred on a procession carrying the entering prince into the city, where he was greeted and paid appropriate homage by the civic authorities. A feast and other celebrations would follow.

From the late Middle Ages entries became the occasion for increasingly lavish displays of pageantry and propaganda. The devising of the iconography, aside from highly conventional patterns into which it quickly settled, were selected with scrupulous care on the part of the welcoming city by the most learned, who would be associated with the chapter of the cathedral, or with the university or the courtly academy, or were drawn from the entourage of the honoree. Many of the greatest artists, writers and composers of the period were involved, with some artists spending significant parts of their time creating temporary decorations, of which little record usually now survives, at least from the early period.