The Fountain House is listed as a museum but it’s really a piece of theatre.
Anna Akhmatova’s apartment housed a never-ending domestic drama. It began in 1918 with an unsuccessful marriage to an Orientalist. She moved in again as live-in mistress to Nikolai Punin, whose actual wife and mother-in-law stubbornly remained in the house during their 16 year relationship.
While living here, Anna endured censorship, informers, the reign of terror, wartime and the frequent imprisonment of nearest and dearest. Her first husband (that was one before the Orientalist) was executed by Stalin. 
Their son, Lev, was sent to prison camp and Punin was also given ten years’ hard in 1949. By now a senior citizen, Punin soon succumbed to a heart attack.
Curiously, perhaps, Anna quite liked the house and was only forcibly removed in 1952 when it was requisitioned by a Government Ministry.
The rooms are styled in different periods and almost represent a timeline of Stalin’s repression of the avant garde. Anna’s biggest mistake came after the war, in 1945. She agreed to receive Isiah Berlin at the house, who was visiting Russia as a British Diplomat.
Isiah was an admirer as well as an authority on Russian literature and knew Pasternak. Stalin, however, believed all diplomats to be foreign spies. Anna was denounced in the Leningrad press, branded ‘half-nun, half-whore’ and her son and Punin were taken away for the last time.
For good measure, Anna had her ration card and pension cut. She later described the encounter with Isiah Berlin as ‘the world’s first meeting of the Cold War’.
The Fountain House, 191014, Saint-Petersburg, 34, Fontanka embankment. Note: the entrance is at 53, Liteiny Prospect. Phone: (812) 272-58-95, 579-7239
