FRANCE:Jurors in the inquest into Princess Diana's death yesterday traced her final movements through the corridors of the Ritz hotel in Paris.
On their second day examining the sites of the princess's final hours, the British jury met at the Paris hotel owned by Mohamed Al Fayed, where Diana and Dodi Al Fayed ate dinner before their fatal car crash in August 1997.
The inquest retraced the route from the imperial suite, room 101, to the hotel's service entrance where their Mercedes had tried to escape the paparazzi.
The court party, including six women and five men jurors as well as lawyers and officials, avoided the hotel's revolving doors which have become familiar through CCTV images of the princess on the night of her death. The jury first viewed the hotel's bar where the driver, Henri Paul, had ordered two Ricards, an aniseed spirit, after returning to duty on August 30th, hours before he drove the couple towards Dodi's Paris apartment.
Lord Justice Scott Baker showed the jury the hotel's main corridor and front reception desk, where Mr Paul and the bodyguards hatched a plan to evade the paparazzi, driving the couple out of the rear of the hotel while an empty convoy left from the front.
The coroner told them: "you will see various cameras around the place and I think they are very similar to the positions they were in 10 years ago."
In the stark hallway just inside the hotel's back door, the jurors gathered around the spot where Diana and Dodi were captured on security video cuddling and holding hands for several minutes as they waited for their car.
The jury was then driven in coaches along three possible routes to Dodi Al Fayed's apartment in the Rue Arsène Houssaye, close to the Arc de Triomphe.
They drove first up the Champs Élysées, which the judge said was the quickest geographic route "but not the preferred route for the experienced chauffeurs".
The second route headed towards the Alma tunnel, but turned on to a slip road before the underpass. This is a more direct route to the flat but the court has heard there are questions over whether something was blocking Mr Paul's access to the slip road. The third route went through the tunnel, past the point of the crash.
The inquest will reconvene today in London.