Diana inquest jurors visit Ritz

The jury in the Princess Diana inquest have retraced her final footsteps through Paris' Ritz Hotel where she spent her final hours with Dodi Fayed.

The 11 jurors are on a two-day trip to the French capital to tour the places Diana visited on the night she died.

She had dined with Mr Fayed at the Ritz before setting out on the doomed car journey in which both would be killed alongside their driver Henri Paul.

Accompanied by a mass of lawyers, court officials and media, the 11 jurors crowded into the narrow foyer outside the suite where the couple had dinner.

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

On Monday, they walked through the Pont de l'Alma tunnel by the River Seine and paused in silence at the spot where the car the Princess was travelling in crashed on August 31, 1997.

They were driven along the route of Diana's final journey, from the Ritz to the scene of the crash under the cover of darkness.

The journey later took them along the Seine passing some of the city's best known sights as they traced the controversial journey from the scene of the crash to the Pitie-Salpetriere hospital where Diana died.

The jury's coach stopped at the side of the road opposite the Gare St Lazare at the spot where the ambulance temporarily halted that night when the Princess's condition deteriorated, just a few hundred metres from the gates of the hospital.

The court has heard how doctors battled to save her life with at least temporary success.

But not long after Diana arrived at the hospital she went into cardiac arrest - at around 2.10am - and subsequent efforts to revive her failed.

The jury was also shown the site of the Hotel-Dieu hospital which the ambulance passed on its way to Pitie-Salpetriere.

The coroner explained last week how the journey to hospital is controversial amid claims that it took too long and that she should have been taken instead to Hotel-Dieu.

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