This Europe: Royal return ends 56-year exile - lured by pizza and football

Italy's two most famous exiles celebrated with champagne this week when the last impediment to their return home – an attempt to call a referendum on the subject – collapsed from lack of support.

It is still not clear when they will visit Italy, where exactly they will go or what they will do when they get here. Vittorio Emanuele, son of Italy's last king, Umberto, has spoken wistfully of coming back the same way he left, aged nine – sailing into Naples harbour. His son Emanuele Filiberto, who has yet to set foot in the bel paese, wants to eat a pizza in view of Naples harbour and has also talked of buying Napoli football club.

So that is one destination taken care of. But the former royals can hardly bypass Rome: the capital's most extraordinary edifice, the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele, which has been likened to a wedding cake, a typewriter and a set of dentures, memorialises their ancestor, first king of united Italy. Near by is the Pantheon, which houses the bones of their forebears, still guarded by royal guards in long capes and white gloves.

Turin is another likely port of call for the visitors: it is the family's ancient seat of power, and home of Juventus, Filiberto's favourite football club (until he buys Napoli).

The family left Italy in 1946 and was permanently banned in 1948 under the new republican constitution. King Vittorio Emanuele III had fled Rome in 1943, abandoning his capital and people as Mussolini's regime crumbled, and earning lasting ignominy in the process. But hostility to the family has waned and even the Republican Party has given up its opposition to their return.

Earlier this year Vittorio Emanuele, 64, formally renounced the throne, clearing the way for a return. However, he has ruled out swearing a formal oath of allegiance to the republic. "As a citizen, I don't have to do it," he said. "If they make me a minister, then I will swear."

The homecoming may prove no more than a vacation: Filiberto, aged 30, who manages hedge funds in Geneva, has said he expects to continue living in Switzerland. But what if the improbable occurs, and the Neapolitans drag him from his yacht and carry him shoulder high through the streets? Filiberto is mentally prepared. "I am from a royal family," he said earlier this year. "So it is hard for me to be against the monarchy. If the Italian people want it, I am ready."