Philippe Petit (French pronunciation: [filip pəti]; born 13 August 1949) is a French highwire artist who gained fame for his unauthorized highwire walks between the towers of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1971 and of Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1973, as well as between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City in August 1974.

He has done wire walking as part of official celebrations in New York, across the United States, and in France and other countries, as well as teaching workshops on the art.

Petit's most famous performance was in August 1974, conducted on a wire between the roofs of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, New York City, 400 metres (1,312 feet) above the ground.

[6] Two more collaborators, Jean François Heckel and Jean-Louis Blondeau, helped him practice in a field in France, and accompanied him to take part in the final rigging of the project, as well as to photograph it.

[7] Petit and his crew gained entry into the towers several times and hid in upper floors and on the roofs of the unfinished buildings to study security measures.

Using his own observations, drawings, and Moore's photographs, Petit constructed a scale model of the towers to design the needed rigging for the wire walk.

On the night of Tuesday, 6 August 1974, Petit and his crew had a lucky break and got a ride in a freight elevator to the 104th floor with their equipment.

District attorney Richard Kuh dropped all formal charges of trespassing and other items relating to his walk[9] on condition that Petit give a free aerial show for children in Central Park.

[10] The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey gave Petit a lifetime pass to the Twin Towers' observation deck.

Petit's highwire walk is credited with bringing the Twin Towers much-needed attention and even affection, as they initially had been unpopular.

[11] Petit's World Trade Center stunt was the subject of Sandi Sissel's 1984 half-hour documentary, High Wire, which featured music from Philip Glass's Glassworks.

Mordicai Gerstein wrote and illustrated a children's book, The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (2003), which won a Caldecott Medal for his art.

The documentary film Man on Wire (2008), by UK director James Marsh, tells of Petit, his collaborators, and his 1974 WTC performance.

On stage with Marsh to accept the Oscar award, Petit made a coin vanish in his hands while thanking the academy "for believing in magic".

[13] The same stunt was fictionalized in a biographical drama entitled The Walk (2015), directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Petit.

Author Colum McCann fictionalized Petit's appearance above New York as a unifying thread throughout his 2009 novel Let the Great World Spin.

In 1989, to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution, mayor Jacques Chirac invited him to walk an inclined wire strung from the ground at the Place du Trocadéro to the second level of the Eiffel Tower, crossing the Seine.

Petit divides his time between New York City, where he is an artist in residence at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, and a hideaway in the Catskill Mountains.

[citation needed] Director James Signorelli assisted with creation of Petit's book To Reach the Clouds (2002), about the Twin Towers walk.

[16] Petit not only wrote about his feat, and events that led to the performance, but also expressed his emotions following the September 11 attacks, during which the Twin Towers were destroyed.