Fire hits renovated Paris Ritz ‘Princess Diana hotel’ weeks before reopening

Flames ripped through the top floor of the luxury Ritz Paris hotel on Tuesday – the hotel where Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed spent their last hours before their fateful car journey in the French capital. About 60 firefighters battled to put out a fire which threatened the work of a 3-½ year restoration program just weeks ahead of a planned re-opening. Some 150 workers were evacuated from the site in the chic Place Vendome square in central Paris at about 0500 GMT (12.00 a.m. ET), where about 15 fire trucks were on the scene, Paris fire service spokesman Captain Yvon Bot said on French television.

There is no longer any risk of it spreading, but the operation will still take a very long time.

Captain Yvon Bot

Clouds of thick black smoke could be seen spewing from the roof at its height. The cause of the fire, which struck on the seventh floor of the building and spread through the attic to the roof, was so far unknown, the official said. By mid-morning, the fire had been brought under control. The former home of fashion designer Coco Chanel and author Marcel Proust, and a favourite drinking hole of American writer Ernest Hemingway, the hotel was last renovated over a decade beginning in 1979 after its purchase by tycoon Mohamed Al-Fayed. Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed had been staying at the hotel before their chauffeur-driven car crashed in an underpass, killing them both in August 1997.

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