Six days of funeral honours for former US president Jimmy Carter is under way as a motorcade carrying his body rolled past flag-waving mourners and headed towards Plains, Georgia, for a final visit to his boyhood home.
Following a service later in Atlanta, the 39th president, who died last month at age 100, will lie in repose for mourners to pay their respects.
Carter then will be taken to lie in state at the US Capitol in Washington on Tuesday.
Flags have been flying at half-mast around the country since Carter died on 29 December at the age of 100 in his hometown of Plains, Georgia.
Carter's state funeral officially began with Secret Service agents from his current and former protective detail carrying his casket to a hearse for a tour through Plains.
The motorcade bearing his remains is to pause at Carter's boyhood family peanut farm while a farm bell rings 39 times in honour of America's 39th president.
His body will then be taken to Atlanta for a brief stop at the Georgia Capitol, where Carter served as a state senator before becoming governor, and a moment of silence.
From there, Carter will be escorted to the Carter Presidential Center where he will lie in repose from 7pm (12am Irish time) to 6am (11am Irish time) on Tuesday to allow the public to pay their respects.
Carter's remains will be flown on Tuesday morning from a military base in Georgia to Joint Base Andrews outside Washington on a US Air Force plane dubbed Special Air Mission 39.
A motorcade will then transport the body of the former commander-in-chief to the US Navy Memorial.
Carter, who attended the US Naval Academy, graduating in 1946, and served on submarines, will be transferred from a hearse to a horse-drawn caisson for a funeral procession to the US Capitol.
Military pallbearers will carry his flag-draped casket to the rotunda of the Capitol where his body will lie in state until 7am (12pm Irish time) on Thursday surrounded by a guard of honour of service members.
Carter will be the 13th former US president to lie in state in the Capitol. Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in 1865, was the first.
A national funeral service is to be held on Thursday at the National Cathedral, an Episcopal church in the nation's capital which also hosted state funerals for former presidents Dwight D Eisenhower, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and George HW Bush.
All four living former presidents, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, are expected to attend.
President Joe Biden is to deliver the eulogy for his fellow Democrat, who served in the White House from 1977 to 1981.
Mr Biden has declared Thursday to be a national day of mourning and federal government offices are to be closed for the day.
He has also ordered flags to be flown at half-mast for 30 days as is customary, which means that will be the case during Donald Trump's 20 January inauguration.
Following the cathedral service, Carter's remains will be flown aboard Special Air Mission 39 back to Georgia for a private funeral service at the Baptist church in Plains where Carter taught Sunday school.
A final motorcade through his hometown will ferry Carter's body to a burial plot at his residence.
US Navy jets will conduct a flyover in his honour before he is laid to rest alongside his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, who died in 2023 at the age of 96.
