Princess Diana Posing Alone in Front of the Taj Mahal, India in 1992

Princess Diana was famously pictured alone on a bench in front of the Taj Mahal, India’s stunning monument to love, when she was visiting the country with Prince Charles in February 1992.

Unknown to the outside world, the Prince and Princess of Wales were already spending much of their time in the UK at separate residences, with Diana based at Kensington Palace and Charles preferring to be at Highgrove in Gloucestershire. Ten months after that photo was taken, they would announce their formal separation.

This is how the Daily Mirror’s royal editor James Whitaker reported that Taj Mahal visit at the time.

Wistful Princess Diana lingered alone yesterday at the Taj Mahal, the world’s most beautiful monument to love. And afterwards Diana, parted from Prince Charles for the day, said intriguingly: “It was a very healing experience.” Asked what she meant, Diana replied: “Work that out for yourself.”

But it seemed clear that the princess was saddened by the absence of her husband, who was visiting an architecture school and making a speech to industrialists. She told Professor Mukund Rawat, who showed her around India’s white marble wonder: “It would have been better if both of us had been here. But my husband has to be in Delhi.”

Before the couple’s engagement, eleven years ago this month, Charles visited the Taj and said he hoped to return one day with his wife. But the prince couldn’t find time to be at Diana’s side yesterday when she spent more than an hour at the classic building dedicated by a grief-stricken emperor to his beloved dead wife. So the princess created her own poignant reminder of the royal wish that didn’t come true.

Waving her staff aside, she sat in silent solitude for five long minutes on the same Taj bench where Charles posed for a photo in 1980. And before leaving the Taj, she wrote in the visitors’ book: “A beautiful monument.”

Professor Rawat said: “It would have been better if both the prince and princess had come to the Taj Mahal. This is a monument that should have been felt and experienced by both. When I mentioned this to the princess she agreed. I did not ask why the prince had not come. I was not supposed to ask. But I felt she was a little sad he was not there.”