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The Anna Akhmatova Museum at the Fountain House

The famous poet Anna Akhmatova lived in a flat on the second floor of the Sheremetevsky Palace during the majority of her life and wrote many of her famous literary works here. At the end of the 20th century the museum devoted to her life and literary creativity was opened in her flat. Now the museum owns a lot of Akhmatova´s personal belongings, photos, books and manuscripts.

The Anna Akhmatova Museum at The Fountain House situated in the center of St. Petersburg, in the Southern Wing of the Sheremetevsky Palace, an architectural masterpiece of Russian Baroque. The museum had been opened by the 100th anniversary of Akhmatova’s birth in 1989 and was the first one dedicated to those representatives of Akhmatova’s generation who tried to save their world and personality under the conditions of the totalitarian state. New exposition solution (2003) divide the space of the museum into two parts: memorial which restores the atmosphere of 1920s-1940s in the Punins’ and Akhmatova’s apartment and historical and literary part submitted to another logic – “sub specie aeternitis” (“from the standpoint of the eternity”), or “I remember that time…” (Akhmatova).

The decision to set up Anna Akhmatova Memorial Museum was made by Leningrad Executive Committee in 1988. They planned to open the museum by the100th anniversary of Akhmatova’s birth: the next 1989 was celebrated by UNESCO as Akhmatova’s year. The Akhmatova’s Literary Heritage Committee was founded in 1988. It was headed by M. A. Dudin who had shown much interest to the idea of opening the museum. The Culture Fund which appeared during perestroika (the restructuring of the Soviet economy and bureaucracy that began in the mid 1980s) seconded the initiative of opening a museum dedicated to a writer who had suffered from the Soviet regime. The opening ceremony was an integral part of Akhmatova’s anniversary celebrations (including a scientific conference) taking place first in Leningrad (the Small Concert Hall of the Philharmonic) and then in Moscow. Anna Akhmatova Memorial Museum was set up as a branch of The Dostoevsky Museum. That was done in order to lighten work of Bella Nurievna Rybalko (The Dostoevsky Museum director) at solving certain organization problems. It was decided to make Anna Akhmatova Memorial Museum separate after its opening.

By that time The Institution of Arctic and Antarctic had vacated the Sheremetevsky Palace where it had been housed since early 1940s. So Anna Akhmatova Memorial Museum was located in a four-storeyed garden wing of the palace. There was Akhmatova’s flat there in former times (she lived on the third floor since 1925 till 1952).

During that period of time (1988-1989) Leningrad authorities paid much attention to the problems of the museum, provided it with money and held their sessions right in the office of the vice-director of Culture Department. They didn’t demand museum’s thematic plans of the exposition for approval. There wasn’t neither censorship nor even a single hint at it as if Leningrad was redeeming its fault to Akhmatova and trying to convince public mind that it longed to forget its totalitarian past.

On the opening day (June 24, 1989) the head of Leningrad Council V. Khodaryov performed a speech written by museum’s workers beforehand. Traditionally there was a mass-meeting near the entrance of the museum in the garden. Then guests visited the exposition (the artist T. N. Voronikhina).

Some of our partners (e.g. German Society of Establishing Diplomatic Relations with Eastern Europe in Maynts) associated the opening of Anna Akhmatova Memorial Museum with perestroika, the fall of Berlin Wall in 1989 and new contacts of Russia with Western Europe.

We began collecting materials, documents, photographs and personal Akhmatova’s things right after the decision of the museum’s opening. We had to define the circle of Akhmatova’s friends and contemporaries in Leningrad and Moscow. Some names could be found thanks to a samizdat book of reminiscences (the secret publication and distribution of government-banned literature in Soviet Union). However those people had already gone or were very old. We were searching for other names and addresses. From time to time it was difficult to overcome the atmosphere of distrust; some people were more friendly but in order to make them give us Akhmatova’s things certain efforts were demanded in any case. We were struck by the fact that neither Soviet regime anathematized Akhmatova’s name, nor Zndanov’s decrees didn’t manage to make people stop revering Akhmatova’s memory. They took out of drawers and from mezzanine books with her autographs, photographs, manuscripts, things which were kept as family relics.

On the opening day we put up a list of names of the people who helped us to form the collection. There were more than 50 names there. There are about 50000 exhibits in the museum collection nowadays: books written by the Silver Age writers with autographs, Akhmatova’s editions, photographs (including documentary photos), manuscripts (Akhmatova’s and her contemporaries’ ones) and other objects. The museum keeps in touch with people who have Akhmatova’s materials in their home collections.

34 Fontanka Embankment (Entrance : Liteiny Prospekt, 53, through the archway).
(812) 272-22-11
Metro: Vladimirskaya, Dostoyevskaya, Nevsky Prospect, Gostiny Dvor

10:30-18:00. Closed Monday. Ticket office open until 17:30.

A ticket enables you to visit the permanent exposition, Josef Brodsky’s American Study, exhibitions and a video-hall. For foreigners 100-200R.

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