Drive to save Moscow's crumbling 'Eiffel Tower'

[MOSCOW] Thousands of Muscovites and several top international architects have launched an unprecedented campaign to save an elegant steel tower that has loomed over Moscow's skyline since 1922.

The Russian Communications Ministry says it will dismantle and relocate the Shukhov tower, a masterpiece of design often compared to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. But campaigners fear the tower will simply be demolished because it will be impossible to dismantle it and put it back together again.

It is the first time a campaign to save a historic building has received such a wide public following, not just from among architecture enthusiasts.