Jurors retrace Diana's final footsteps at Ritz

The jury in the Diana, Princess of Wales, inquest today retraced her final footsteps through the corridors of the Ritz hotel in Paris.

Accompanied by a mass of lawyers, court officials and media, the 11 jurors who began hearing the case in London last week, crowded into the narrow foyer outside the suite where Diana and her lover Dodi Fayed dined on the night of their deaths.

They then followed the route taken by the couple to the back of the hotel in their doomed plan to escape the waiting paparazzi and stood in the stark surroundings of the hotel’s rear service door.

It was here, 10 years ago, that Diana and Dodi waited, cuddling and holding hands, for the car that was to take them to their deaths.

Diana and Dodi were killed alongside their driver Henri Paul in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in the early hours of August 31 1997.

Today’s visit to the Ritz came on the second day of a trip to Paris which has made legal history as the first time a British inquest jury has left the UK whilst sitting in a case.

Yesterday they visited the Pont de l’Alma tunnel and stood silently at the thirteenth pillar, the exact spot where the couple’s car crashed that night.

As part of an exercise to familiarise themselves with the traffic patterns and road layouts which lie at the heart of the evidence they will be hearing over the next six months they travelled through the tunnel seven times yesterday - both by coach and on foot – and once more today.

Late last night they were driven along the River Seine from the scene of the crash to the hospital where Diana died a few hours later.

Accompanied by coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker, the jury arrived at the Ritz just after 10.30 today.

Because of the size of the court party, the revolving doors at the front of the hotel – which have become famous from fleeting CCTV images of the Princess on the night of her death – were left unused as the jury squeezed through a second entrance.

The first stop was a brief visit to the Bar Vendome which, the inquest has heard, Mr Paul visited in the hours before driving the couple.

Receipts indicate that Mr Paul ordered two Ricards – an aniseed spirit – after returning from being off-duty at around 10pm on August 30.

The jury has been shown extensive CCTV footage from inside the hotel that night, including the moment when Mr Paul went into the bar to meet bodyguards Trevor Rees (formerly Rees-Jones) and Kes Wingfield.

As the jury gathered in the plush bar, where caviar is on the menu, the coroner told them: “Good morning everyone, I hope you had a pleasant night and that it wasn’t too short.

“We’re going to look at one or two of the places that have been mentioned, the main places in the Ritz.

“You will see various cameras around the place and I think they are very similar to the positions they were in 10 years ago.

“And then we are going to go on three journeys in the bus to Rue Arsene Houssaye, which was where Dodi’s apartment was, to show you different ways of getting there.”

Pointing to his surroundings, he added: “This, of course, is the Bar Vendome which I would say you are familiar with from the outside but you have not seen inside.”

After leading the jury back and forth along the main corridor, the Hall Vendome, he showed them the front reception desk, a scene familiar to them from footage of the various movements of Mr Paul and the bodyguards that night as they hatched their decoy plan to evade the paparazzi, driving the couple out of the rear of the hotel while an empty convoy made off from the front.

In the CCTV footage Mr Paul is seen repeatedly running up and down the stairs to the small foyer outside the Imperial Suite where the two bodyguards were on duty outside while the couple dined inside.

Today, the coroner took a decidedly more sedate pace as he led the court party up the stairs to squeeze into the area outside Room 101, the Imperial Suite.

As the jury and court officials packed into the space, a contemporary security guard stood, arms folded, in front of the door.

While in the CCTV footage the two bodyguards are shown sitting on matching armchairs on either side of the door, today one of the chairs had gone missing.

The coroner commented: “It’s gone – it was there earlier.”

Lord Justice Scott Baker then led the court party down a narrow corridor the full length of the first floor, following the route taken by the Princess and shown in video footage to the court last week.

In the CCTV images Diana and Dodi are seen squeezing into a small service lift, Diana pointing and joking at one stage.

As the court party reached the lift at the end of the corridor, the coroner said: “Here you can see the service lift and you can see inside. We shan’t be going down in the service lift for the obvious reason that it won’t take all of us.”

Pointing at the lift with the CCTV camera which the couple used, the coroner led the way down a back staircase and into a columned salon at the back of the hotel.

He briefly led the court party into the Salon de Nuit nightclub and pointed out the second rear exit close to the spot where the couple’s Mercedes was waiting for them, along with the first of the paparazzi who would pursue them that night.

The coroner then led the court party through a curtain and into a plain service corridor leading directly to the back door.

The jurors massed around the spot where, in the video footage they watched last week, Diana and Dodi stood cuddling for several minutes as they waited for the car to pick them up.

Stepping outside into the adjoining Rue Cambon, the jury was shown where the Princess walked as she headed for the Mercedes.

The cameras which recorded the very last known piece of film of the Princess were still in place.

The court party were then driven away in their coaches to be shown three separate possible routes to Dodi Fayed’s flat in the Rue Arsene Houssaye close to the Arc de Triomphe at the top of the Champs Elysees.