PARIS - A 31-year-old Norwegian man died late Monday in an unauthorized parachute jump from the second level of the Eiffel Tower, police said Tuesday, launching an inquiry into the accident.
According to investigators, three Norwegians were attempting to film an advertisement for a clothing line at the famed Paris landmark.
One jumped from the second level of the tower, 115 meters (380 feet) up, but he did not clear the first level of the iron structure, and died instantly after smashing into the metal beams, police said.
The Eiffel Tower, which stands 324 meters high, draws six million visitors a year, making it one of the world's most popular tourist attractions.
A tower spokesman told AFP that barriers had been placed "everywhere" to prevent people from committing suicide by jumping from the structure, adding that parachuting accidents were even more rare.
But the tower's criss-crossing beams make it possible for people to sneak through.
The spokesman said, without offering specific figures, that suicides were rare at the tower, noting: "There are some years when there are two or three, but other years when there are no suicides at all."
He added that all requests to scale the tower or jump from it were systematically denied.
Police said two more Norwegians were intercepted by private security guards earlier as they tried to reach the top of the 210-meter Montparnasse tower on the other side of Paris, apparently to prepare for a similar leap. The two "base-jumpers" - parachutists who jump from a fixed point and not an aircraft - are being questioned. The police had detained an accomplice of the man who died as he climbed the tower along with him.
The Eiffel tower has attracted quite a few daredevils since its opening at the 1889 World's Fair. A British couple successfully parachuted from the top deck in 1984, while a New Zealander bungee-jumped off the second level in 1987. However, hundreds have died too, mostly in suicides.
A spokeswoman for SNTE, the company that maintains the tower, said security measures meant very few parachutists or hang-gliders managed to leap from the monument. In one recorded incident, an Austrian named Franz Reichelt, jumped from the first floor with a parachute of his own invention in 1912. He did not survive.