About 11 years ago, I climbed to the top of the spire of Notre Dame. It was not a place open to the public. (Although this is true, I find my own story hard to believe, so I will understand if there is skepticism.)<p>We were drunk and it was dark and late. We hopped the iron fence in the back, and scaled the southern wall that runs along the nave, where the flying buttresses are.<p>To get to the top, you climbed the walls and roof outside the building until you reached the base of the spire, and then you climbed inside the spire up several stories linked by rough wooden ladders, and then you had to get out and climb outside again, on a series of metal hooks, to get to the top where you could touch a metal globe and cross.<p>There was very little security (just one trap door inside the spire that you had to climb through, where you had to make sure breaking an electrical current didn't set off an alarm).<p>It was all very old, obviously, and old in a way of places where no one ever goes. Little used, and therefore neglected. Was the wiring on the trapdoor well insulated? I doubt it.<p>There was a small group of climbers in Paris who knew about this. Maybe a couple dozen people. One of them would occasionally lead a small group of friends: free climbing to the top of one segment of the wall, and then letting down a rope to help up those behind.<p>Notre Dame is at the center of Paris. There is a bronze marker in front of the church called "kilometre zero," from which all distances along French national routes are measured. From the top of the spire, the city fanned out like petals around a pistil. Paris was made to be seen from that one point, where no one ever went except a few climbers and pigeons, and maybe an adventurous priest.<p>The climber who took us up to near the top of the spire lay himself down on a rafter in its hollow interior, above the void, and fell asleep. Like I said, we were drunk, and it was all very dumb and dangerous.<p>When we came back down, about a foot before the last person touched the ground again, his rope broke. He picked it up, stared at it for a second, murmured "C'est mort", and threw it away.