Philippe Petit

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Petit at WTC, 1974

Philippe Petit (born August 13, 1949) is a French high wire artist who gained fame for his illegal walk between the former Twin Towers in New York City on August 7, 1974. He used a 450 pound cable to do so. 24-year-old Petit made eight crossings between the still unfinished towers, a quarter mile above the Earth. The stunt took six years of planning, during which he learned everything he could about the buildings. His stunt made headlines around the world.

He first received the inspiration while he sat in his dentist's office in Paris. He came upon an article on the incomplete towers, along with an illustration in model form.

The immense news coverage and public appreciation of Petit's stunt resulted in all formal charges relating to his walk being dropped. The court did however "sentence" Petit to perform a high-wire act for children in New York's Central Park. Petit was also presented with a lifetime pass to the Twin Towers' Observation Deck by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

In 2002, Petit published a memoir describing the stunt, To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers (ISBN 0-86547-651-9). Mordicai Gerstein's children's book about the walk, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (ISBN 0-7613-1791-0), received the Caldecott Award in 2004.

Tight-rope walker, unicyclist, magician and pantomime artist, Philippe Petit was also the earliest modern day street juggler in Paris in 1968. He juggled and worked on a slack rope with regularity in Washington Square Park in New York City in the early 1970s. Petit was formerly Artist-in-Residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Other famous structures he has used for tightrope walks include that Cathedral, the Louisiana Superdome, and between the Palais de Chaillot and the Eiffel Tower.

Petit lives in Woodstock, New York.