Moscow's Hotel Metropol up for auction

MOSCOW (AP) — Michael Jackson slept there. Vladimir Lenin harangued Bolsheviks there. Over the past century, the Hotel Metropol has seen the extremes of Russian life, from austere revolutionary fervor to flashy pop indulgence.

Now, at a starting price of 8.7 billion rubles ($272 million), the hotel is up for sale Thursday, auctioned off by the Moscow city government as part of its privatization program. That’s expected to go higher — in steps of 435 million rubles ($13.6 million) — and where it will stop is anybody’s guess.