The Grand Ducal Family of Luxembourg left the country to find refuge in Portugal, after receiving transit visas from the Portuguese consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes, in June 1940.

After travelling through Coimbra and Lisbon, the family first stayed in Cascais, in Casa de Santa Maria, owned by Manuel Espírito Santo, who was then the honorary consul for Luxembourg in Portugal.

[5] After World War II he undertook studies in Louvain, then at the Royal Military Academy at Aldershot.

[1] He inherited from his father Villa Pianore, an estate held by the Bourbon-Parma family in Italy[1] (a large property located between Pietrasanta and Viareggio).

[1] As an unprecedented marriage between a prince of Luxembourg's reigning family and a commoner, Charles's brother, Grand Duke Jean, issued a decree to authorize the union as dynastic on 16 February 1967.