Watch man known as the ‘French Spiderman’ climb his way up a 47-story skyscraper
For Alain Robert, climbing tall towers across the world is his personal calling.
“This is my path, this is my way of living,” he told NDTV. “It is as important to me as eating, sleeping.
“I need that,” he continued. “It keeps me alive.”
Police from Makati City, Philippines, say the 56-year-old man, known as the “French Spiderman,” climbed GT International Tower on early Tuesday morning, CNN reported.
The office building stands at 713-feet tall and has 47 stories, according to SkyscraperPage.com.
Robert told The Philippines Star that he was intrigued by the “interesting shape” of the GT International Tower. The man said he chose the skyscraper because it “looks easy to climb.”
Videos obtained by McClatchy show Robert as he is about halfway up the tower — and him taking a break near a window as a person inside the skyscraper records.
“I see thousands of people inside the building. I did brighten their day,” Robert told CNN. “They will remember that their whole life.
“I am entertaining people for free in the district,” he added.
Robert said he was confronted by armed guards when he reached the top of the skyscraper, according to The Philippines Star. Police say he was arrested and charged with “Alarms and Scandal and other forms of Trespass.”
But Robert defended his actions, saying that no one was harmed, The Philippines Star reported.
“I am not killing anybody,” he told the newspaper. “This is not bank robbery.”
Robert owns the Guiness World Record for “most buildings climbed unassisted,” with the official number being 121.
He conquered dozens of tall buildings throughout the world, including the Eiffel Tower and the Sydney Opera House, Rappler reported.
“Astonishingly, Mr. Robert says he suffers from vertigo, and has experienced accidents that have left him partly disabled,” according to The New York Times. “At the age of 19, he fell from a cliff, and doctors told him he would never climb again.”
But that hasn’t stopped him from scaling structures across the world — including Heron Tower in London last year, the Times reported.
“At no point I have ever thought about giving up on my childhood dream,” Robert wrote on his website. “I already knew that climbing was for me as important as eating or breathing.”
This story was originally published January 29, 2019 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Watch man known as the ‘French Spiderman’ climb his way up a 47-story skyscraper."