Soviet-era hotel coming down

Rooms at Intourist hotel were rumoured to be bugged

MOSCOW, Russia -- Workers have started to tear down Moscow's Intourist Hotel -- a Brezhnev-era landmark and the setting of countless spy novels -- to make space for a western five-star replacement.

Over the past decade the 22-floor hotel, to many an eyesore offering fine views of the Kremlin, has become run down and overtaken by luxury hotels run by Western chains.

The hotel was built in 1970 in a style which clashed with the neo-classical facades of Tverskaya Street.

It catered mainly for foreigners during the Soviet-era and will not be missed by Muscovites, says CNN's Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty.

"It was a very grim place where you were always guaranteed cheap but bad service, Soviet-style. I stayed there several times in the 1980s and it was a classic Soviet hotel -- huge, impersonal and filled with rooms of people who did not want to offer help at all.

"The building itself was also considered something of a blight on the city's architecture. It's a modern and rather ugly building in what is a very elegant party of Moscow. It really did spoil the symmetry of that area. No-one will be sorry to see it go."

But management and staff felt otherwise. "This was a good hotel," deputy director Alexander Kolesnikov told Reuters, as workers ripped out carpets with a shovel, marking the start of an expected two-month demolition job.

"The hotel was profitable to the end and could have continued to bring profit to the future for the city of Moscow and the Russian Federation as a whole."

General manager Vakhtang Tsulaya added that the giant building was built in the style of its times.

During the Soviet-era -- in accordance to the practice of the time -- the hotel had matrons on every floor to note the guests' movements.

In recent years it offered reasonably priced accommodation in the city where even an average Western-style hotel room cost hundreds of dollars a night.

The Moscow city government plans to build a new, more upmarket hotel at the prime site across a square from the Kremlin fortress.

Russian news reports said plumbing fixtures and some of the mainly plywood furniture would be sold off.