Fire hits renovated Paris Ritz weeks before reopening

Captain Yvon Bot, a spokesman for the Paris fire brigade, said: “No one has been hurt…Our concern is to stop the fire spreading to the whole of the roof and seventh floor”.

“At the moment, it is very unlikely that the fire will spread or that the ceiling will collapse”, a spokesperson for Paris fire department said.

The top floor of Paris’s famous Ritz hotel was reportedly engulfed in fire as the establishment prepared to reopen its doors to guests after a three-year restoration effort.

The alert was raised at 06:00 local time (05:00 GMT) and about 60 firefighters and 15 fire engines were sent to the scene. The hotel is now empty while it undergoes a €200 million refurbishment, and there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The blaze began early on Tuesday at the luxury hotel where Diana, Princess of Wales, spent her final hours before the vehicle crash in which she died.

Paris police tweeted that there was a “major fire”, and advised motorists to avoid the Place Vendome area. It was due to re-open in July, 2014, but delays in the work meant the re-opening date had been put back to March this year.

It is not the first time the Place Vendome has seen a fire – in 2012 a blaze at an underground vehicle park, prompting the nearby square to be evacuated.

Their auto crashed in an underpass beside the river Seine as they drove by a roundabout route to Dodi’s flat just off the Champs Elysées.