Huge Fire Engulfs One of the Most Expensive Hotels in Paris Owned by Billionaire, Mohamed Al-Fayed (Photos)

 

 

The Ritz was due to re-open in March following a three-and-a-half-year restoration, but its entire top floor appeared to be on fire this Tuesday morning, January 19.

 

The blaze could destroy a multi-million pound refurbishment, according to local news reports. 

 

Flames and thick black smoke could be seen pouring out of the world-famous building, which is owned by billionaire businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed, 86.

 

He had spent at least £200 million honouring the hotel founder’s promise of offering guests ‘all the refinement that a prince could desire in his own home’.

 

 

The Ritz was due to re-open in March following a three-and-a-half-year restoration, but its entire top floor appeared to be on fire today.

 

A firefighter at the scene said: "The roof had caught fire. The blaze broke out at around 7am. There are not thought to be any injuries.

 

 

There were 1200 workers on site every day to reach completion, with 550 hotel staff still on the payroll.

 

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

 

The Ritz, in the Place Vendome, was the place Princess Diana set off from on her last fateful car journey, which ended in tragedy in the Pont d’Alma underpass on August 31st 1997.

 

Diana died alongside Mr Al-Fayed’s son, Dodi Al-Fayed, and their driver, Henri Paul, who worked for the Ritz but had been drinking while on medication.

 

AFPSmoke fills the sky near the Column Vendome as a fire broke out in an underground car parkPrevious: A fire broke out in the underground car park of the hotel in 2012

 

The private mansion was opened as a hotel in 1889, by the Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz.

 

It was the first hotel to have en suite bathrooms and electricity in every room, and inspired Irving Berlin's 1929 song Putting On The Ritz .

 

Coco Chanel lived in a suite that bears her name, collaborating with the occupying Nazis, who loved staying at the hotel between 1940 and 1944.

 

In August 1944, the American author Ernest Hemingway arrived in Paris on a tank and boasted about ‘liberating’ the main bar in the hotel.

 

‘When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz,’ Hemingway wrote.

 

The refurbishment came amid growing competition from high-end hotels in Paris, such as the Bristol and Crillon.