Tashkent - TV Tower

Every city has its own calling card and Tashkent is no exception. You can see it from afar, and to look at the man-made creation, all you have to do is look up from below. This is the TV Tower of Tashkent – one of the most beautiful and tallest TV towers in Central Asia.

In the 1960s, television and radio took a firm place in Uzbekistan’s cultural life. The first 180-metre-high Uzbek television centre, built in 1957, could no longer fully cover the four million people in the capital and the Tashkent region. In addition, there was a need to extend radio and television broadcasts to the distant mountain regions.

On 1 September 1971, the Department for the Construction of the Tashkent Radio and Television Centre was established under the Ministry of Communications of the Republic of Uzbekistan (now the Republican Agency for Communications and Information). Preparations for a new television tower project were started in a short time. The project was thoroughly studied and tested, as the construction of such a skyscraper was unprecedented.

Finally, in 1978, the construction of the new Tashkent TV Tower began. All the necessary materials were carefully studied, technological requirements and standards were observed. The steel equipment was delivered to Tashkent from Germany.

The durability of any construction depends, of course, on the foundation. The four columns of the TV tower and the three attached pylons were raised from a depth of 11 metres and rest on unbonded reinforced concrete foundations, creating a classic system capable of maintaining a very high balance.

The construction of the TV tower was carried out by the builders of the “11-Balandqurilish” department. The authors of the project were Y.P. Semashko, N.G. Terziev-Tsarukov and its designers were E.P. Morozov and M.D. Musheev. It took six years to build the tower. The task of the specialists was to erect the tallest building in the whole of Central Asia and at the same time to solve all the problems.

Severe winter conditions in 1984-85, an altitude of 480 metres above sea level, regular winds and the ascent of the equipment made it difficult to measure the slope accurately. Nevertheless, the builders succeeded.

The tower was built with a special crane that can lift 25 tonnes of cargo to a height of 240 metres. The TV tower is also equipped with three fast Swiss Shindler lifts, which have not yet been used in our country and can reach a height of 220 metres.

On 15 January 1985, the flag began to flutter at the highest point of the building. The activity of the Tashkent TV Tower is unthinkable without its departments and special workshops. The centre has more than a dozen workshops, television and radio stations in the Tashkent region.

The height of the television tower is 375 metres, it is equipped with the most modern technology and equipment for radio and television broadcasting. The total weight of the construction is over – 6,000 tonnes.

The lobby of the TV Tower is decorated with richly ornamented mosaic panels and models of the tallest towers in the world. The Tashkent TV Tower takes the tenth place among them.

Anyone can climb up to the viewing platform and visit the “Koinot” restaurant at a height of 110 metres. The restaurant has two halls: “Blue” in national style and “Red” in European style. There you can sit at a table on a special rotating platform and admire breathtaking views of Tashkent from a bird’s eye view. At night, the tower shimmers with thousands of lights and fascinates with its beauty and grandeur – the symbol of human labour and technical progress.