LONDON — King Charles III continued his tour of the nations of the United Kingdom on Tuesday with a visit to Northern Ireland before a planned return to London in the evening to meet Queen Elizabeth’s coffin at Buckingham Palace alongside other members of the royal family.
The queen’s body has been in Scotland since she died at Balmoral Castle on Thursday at the age of 96. Over the weekend, her coffin was moved to Edinburgh, and it will be taken to London later on Tuesday.
Charles and his wife, Camilla, the queen consort, flew to Belfast on Tuesday morning and visited Hillsborough Castle, where thousands of mourners have been laying flowers since the queen’s death. The king’s tour of the United Kingdom will end in Wales on Friday.
The royal couple was greeted on the tarmac in Belfast by local officials, but also by two young people from a cross-community elementary school that brings together children from the Protestant and Catholic communities. Most schoolchildren in Northern Ireland are still educated in schools divided along religious lines.
Crowds cheered as the king and queen entered the village of Hillsborough, before Charles and Camilla spent time shaking hands with those waiting at the castle to see the new monarch.
Hillsborough Castle, a Georgian-era mansion outside Belfast, is a royal residence and the official home of the secretary of state for Northern Ireland. The site played a major part in the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement, which ended years of sectarian violence. Political parties held discussions there in 1997 and in 1998, the year the agreement was signed.
Charles was scheduled to meet with local political leaders at the castle and will receive a message of condolence from the speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The king’s visit comes at a politically fraught moment in Northern Ireland, amid a political stalemate that has seen the breakdown of a power-sharing agreement between unionist and nationalist parties on either side of the sectarian divide. The impasse has lasted for months, in part because of a debate over Brexit provisions.
Elections in May saw the main Irish nationalist party, Sinn Fein, receive the highest number of votes of any party in the region for the first time.
Sinn Fein politicians are no supporters of the British monarchy, but, in the days since the queen’s death, the party’s leadership has offered their sympathies to the royal family.
“Throughout the peace process, she led by example in building relationships with those of us who are Irish, and who share a different political allegiance and aspirations to herself and her government,” Michelle O’Neill, the first minister-designate of the Northern Ireland Assembly, wrote in a statement about Queen Elizabeth. Ms. O’Neill will meet with the king later on Tuesday.
The trip will be Charles’s 40th to Northern Ireland but his first as the monarch. Queen Elizabeth visited Northern Ireland a number of times throughout her reign; one of the most memorable visits was in 2012, during her Diamond Jubilee tour, when she shook hands in Belfast with Martin McGuinness, former commander of the Irish Republican Army. The handshake was seen as a significant gesture for both of them and an affirmation of the peace process.
King Charles will meet with religious leaders while in Northern Ireland, before attending a service at St. Anne’s Cathedral.
A day earlier, the newly appointed king and his siblings — Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward — walked behind the queen’s coffin as it was moved from Holyroodhouse to St. Giles’ Cathedral, Edinburgh.
In Edinburgh, some people stood in line for hours to file past the queen’s coffin. By Tuesday morning, however, the wait time had reduced to a little over an hour.
Peter Cooper, who works for British Airways and who arrived in Edinburgh late Monday, said that he had gone straight to the cathedral.
“As I walked in there, I was welling up,” Mr. Cooper said. “I was in the right place at the right time, and I was really chuffed to be here.”
At 5 p.m., after prayers in the cathedral, the queen’s coffin is scheduled to be flown to London. A hearse will take it to Edinburgh Airport, from where it will be transported in a Royal Air Force plane to Northolt, an air base west of central London. Princess Anne will accompany the queen’s coffin on the flight.
From the air base, the coffin will be driven to Buckingham Palace, where a guard of honor will receive it. Pallbearers from the Grenadier Guards will take the coffin to the Bow Room, where it will be placed on trestles in the center of the room. King Charles will be there, as will Queen Camilla and other members of the royal family, according to Buckingham Palace.
Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Edinburgh.
