A. Radio and television towers are tall structures designed to transmit radio or television signals. However, besides serving their main function they often become tourist attractions, as a lot of them are true architectural wonders. Among some of the most famous – and tallest – towers in the world are the Tokyo Skytree, the Canton Tower in China, the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, and the Ostankino Tower in Moscow, Russia.

B. The Ostankino Tower is 540 meters tall which makes it the tallest tower in Europe. When it was built in 1968, it was the tallest structure in the world, which it remained until 1975. The Ostankino Tower radio and television signal covers the area with the population of over 15 million people. The Tower also has an observation platform and a restaurant about 330 meters in the air which you can reach on one of the lifts in just 58 seconds.

C. The first Radio Tower in Moscow was built during the Civil War in 1922 by the outstanding Russian architect Vladimir Shukhov and is a hyperboloid structure. In fact, it was Shukhov who first invented the hyperboloid metal structure in the 1890s, inspired by the weaving of peasant baskets. Vladimir Lenin himself approved the construction of this tower which today is considered a historic and architectural monument of Soviet Constructivism.

D. Yet another use of television towers is holding sports events. Some of the most common ones are base-jumping, an extreme sport where participants jump off high structures with parachutes; and bungee jumping, where the jumpers are attached to a tall structure with a large elastic cord. Among the more traditional competitions is racing up the tower staircase, which was held in the Ostankino Tower up until 2000, when the tower was damaged by the fire.

E. The fire broke out at a height of 458 m on 27 August, 2000. It took over 300 firefighters, more than 24 hours and a lot of effort to stop it. Many people were afraid that the tower would not be able to survive and would collapse. Luckily it didn’t happen. But almost all TV channels and some radio channels stopped working for several days. The reconstruction of the tower that followed lasted until 2007. In 2009 the tower reopened its doors to tourists.

F. And not only to them. On July 21, 2018, Ostankino Tower was open again to 28 sportsmen from 12 countries who raced up its winding staircase. The staircase is very narrow, so the sportsmen had to run one by one with a 30 second interval between them. Only professional runners were allowed to participate. It was a German athlete Christian Riedl who made it to the top in just 9 minutes and 51 seconds, setting a new record.

G. It would be logical to assume that television towers are the tallest structures in the world. In fact, it had been true until 2009 when the Burj Khalifa, the tallest sky-scraper in the world, was built in Dubai. It cost about $ 1.5 billion to complete the construction of this building, but it paid off: office and apartment space pricing is over $ 40,000 per m², and over 90% of all the apartments and offices are now occupied!