World leaders have gathered in Paris to join mourners in paying their final respects to the former French president Jacques Chirac.

A series of private and national ceremonies are being held during a national day of mourning for the charismatic and popular former leader.

After a mass attended by about 200 family and friends at the Hôtel des Invalides, the current president, Emmanuel Macron, led a military tribute. Later on Monday a funeral will be held at the church of Saint-Sulpice before Chirac is buried with full military honours at the Montparnasse cemetery in the south of the capital.

Macron entered Les Invalides at 10.45am to review French troops as the Marseillaise was played. To a solemn drumbeat, Chirac’s coffin, draped in a tricolour, was brought into the cour d’honneur and placed on the ground.

The atmosphere was sombre and silent. Several military veterans present could be seen wiping their eyes as the funeral march was played.

After a minute’s silence, Macron followed the coffin out of Les Invalides and it was transported to Saint-Sulpice, 2km away.

Chirac, who was president of France between 1995 and 2007, died on Thursday at the age of 86. His death prompted a flood of tributes to the man whose political career spanned more than four decades and who was seen as one of France’s last great statespeople.

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was among 30 world leaders who flew to Paris to attend the funeral. The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and the German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, were also due to attend, as were former leaders who worked with Chirac, including Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European commission, the former German chancellor Gerard Schröder and the former US president Bill Clinton.

French politicians will turn out en masse, including three former presidents – 93-year-old Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Chirac’s successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, and the former Socialist president François Hollande.

Before the military ceremony, Chirac’s widow, Bernadette, 86, attended a private mass at the Saint-Louis-des-Invalides cathedral. The couple were married for 63 years and had two daughters, Laurence, who died in 2016, and Claude.

Chirac will be buried next to his elder daughter, who had anorexia for most of her adult life and died at the age of 58.

Chirac’s only grandchild, Martin Chirac-Rey, 23, addressed about 200 family and friends after the private service.