Funeral for former French first lady Bernadette Chirac to take place in Paris

The funeral on Friday will be held at the Parisian Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde, in accordance with the wishes of the deceased, her daughter Claude Chirac told AFP. Bernadette and Jacques Chirac were married in the nearby Sainte-Clotilde chapel, where the funeral of the couple's eldest daughter, Laurence, was also held in 2016.

A tribute will also be paid to the former first lady on Sunday in Corrèze, where she served as a general councilor for several decades. The tribute will begin with a religious ceremony at 10am in the town of Corrèze followed by a "friendly gathering and moment of remembrance" at 2pm at the Domaine de Sédières, open to "all the people of Corrèze, so dear to her heart", her daughter said.

First Lady Brigitte Macron, who succeeded Bernadette Chirac as head of the Fondation des Hôpitaux (Yellow Coins Foundation), will be present at the funeral, as will former president Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife Carla alongside numerous former political allies, prominent figures and friends.

For more than half a century, Chirac was the fixed point in her late husband's restless climb – through parliament, two terms as prime minister, 18 years as mayor of Paris and, in 1995, the presidency.

The Chanel suits, dark glasses, nasal voice and withering judgments became part of her iconic national image.

Beneath them was a relentless worker and a cold-eyed political operator who, almost alone among the wives of French presidents, built a base of power that was her own.

She was born Bernadette Thérèse Marie Chodron de Courcel on May 18, 1933, in Paris, into money, lineage and Catholic duty.

Her father's family included soldiers, industrialists and diplomats; an uncle had served as an aide to Charles de Gaulle in wartime London.

But her life would be most marked by her time at the prestigious Sciences Po university in Paris, where she met Jacques Chirac, a handsome young man whose appetite for politics would come to define them both.

They married in March 1956. The union lasted 63 years and was, by her own account, a long lesson in endurance.

Jacques Chirac was famous for his warmth, appetite and instinctive connection with crowds. Bernadette's gifts were different, observers said. She was controlled, socially formidable, devout, exacting and sometimes devastatingly funny.

The Catholic philosopher Jean Guitton called her the “last queen of France” and she did little to discourage the idea.

Her husband's reputation as a womaniser was an open secret that she chose to meet with dry humour.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)