Former US president Ronald Reagan's casket was placed in the Capitol Rotunda Wednesday evening, brought there by a century-old caisson �� accompanied by the storied riderless horse symbolizing the fallen president �� as a crowd of thousands watched along the route, quietly witnessing the high pageantry of America's first presidential state funeral in three decades.

Reagan's body arrived at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland from California to close the first chapter in a slowly unfolding week of remembrance. In California, more than 100,000 people had paid respects to Reagan in his presidential hilltop library.

Washington last staged these presidential rites in 1973, for Lyndon Johnson, less than a decade after John Kennedy's assassination produced the state funeral carved most deeply in America's memory.

Reagan, who died Saturday at 93, will be buried Friday in a sunset ceremony on the Simi Valley library grounds.

In Washington, 141 embassies accepted invitations to send representatives to the ceremony at Congress on Wednesday evening that begins Reagan's period of lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda.

President Bush planned to come back from the Group of Eight meeting in Georgia on Thursday and, with his wife Laura, call on Mrs. Reagan at Blair House, the official guest residence across the street from the White House.

Aides said Bush would visit the casket Thursday evening. Bush and his father, who was Reagan's vice president and succeeded him in the White House, will be among the eulogists Friday.

Source: Agencies