Walking to school this morning in the gray, vaguely sleeting weather, I made plans with myself to head home right after class to finally edit the whole new mass of photos I have yet to upload. But then, at the end of conversation class, in the last three minutes, suddenly the sun showed itself on the embankment and the room warmed and brightened and I was filled with inspiration to actually go do something after class for once, knock something off my very long list of Things To Do Before I Leave St. Petersburg In June.
So I chose to finally check out the Anna Akhmatova museum, in the Fountain House, feeling vaguely guilty for choosing an indoor venue when the weather had suddenly become so nice. But I found out today that you absolutely cannot go to the Anna Akhmatova museum on a day with shitty weather. The atmosphere created by the sun and the blue sky in the former apartment of Anna Akhmatova is absolutely essential for the experience.
The entrance for the museum is through a dirty, poorly marked dvor off of Litenii Prospekt, a noisy, chaotic, sooty, busy and perpetually traffic-filled street not too far from my house. I did not have high hopes entering this dvor, expecting any other apartment-museum -- small, cramped, cluttered, dusty, the kind that St. Petersburg has so many of thanks to its many famous writers. But after I walked through the archway into the courtyard of the museum, there was a sudden explosion of sun reflecting off of the warm yellow and white paint of the old palace in which Akhmatova's apartment is located. The courtyard of this museum is the most beautiful courtyard I have ever seen in St. Petersburg -- there are trees and benches and the warm yellow paint and women with strollers. For all the dirty, loud chaos that is Litenii Prospekt, this courtyard is a little bit of Eden. Perhaps my opinion of this place was severely hightened by today's brilliant weather, but I fell in love instantly with this spot.
The weather also clearly enhanced my experience in the museum itself. I really enjoyed the exhibits of old black and white photographs, the many artifacts, the fact that the metal name plate of Akhmatova's husband -- Nikolai Punin -- was still on the door, as if they still lived there. There was one excellent wall with layers and layers of the different wallpapers and newspapers and paints that had covered that wall over the years. It was also interesting to learn that apparently Akhmatova and Punin lived in that house with Punin's ex-wife and their child, all together under the same room. And people are impressed by how amiable the divorces in my family are.... But just in general, the over all atmospheric feeling was what I loved the most about the museum -- the high ceilings, the small windows up on the tops of the walls, showing only the blue, blue sky, the warm sunlight everywhere reflecting off of the creamy green paint. All I could think the whole time was damn, if I lived in a place this beautiful I would be inspired to write poetry as well.
Over all, the Anna Akhmatova Museum gets a solid five-star rating in terms of museums for me... I fully plan on going back, even if just to the courtyard to sit. Besides, it's free with my Russian student ID!
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