Anna Akhmatova considered herself homeless - "shepherdless", in her own words. However, in Moscow, the doors of the apartment at Bolshaya Ordynka, 17 were always open for the poet: there her "foster family" - the writer Viktor Ardov and his wife - allocated a small room to the poetess.

Mikhail Ardov is their son. He lived in the house on Ordynka for almost thirty years, and the flow of famous writers, musicians, and actors who visited his parents' house was part of his childhood. “... starting from the fiftieth year, she lived with us on Ordynka almost more than in Leningrad. At first, the investigation into the son's case dragged on, he was in prison. And then the work demanded it - Akhmatova was given poetic translations precisely in Moscow publishing houses, ”recalls Mikhail Ardov in his book“ The Legendary Ordynka ”.

Akhmatova herself called the house of his parents “Legendary Ordynka”.

In the small room allotted to her in the Ardovs' house, Anna Akhmatova stayed from 1938 to 1966. Here she worked and received her guests - Boris Pasternak, Emma Gerstein, and others, many of whom were not her friends, but pilgrims who were in a hurry to get to know their idol.

“Anna Andreevna told us at breakfast: “Today is big Akhmatovka.” This meant that she would have many guests, ”says Ardov’s book about life next to the poet.

Mikhail Ardov and actor Alexei - Nina Olshevskaya's son from his first marriage - grew up in front of Akhmatova and fought for many years for the opportunity to turn their family apartment into a memorial museum. But so far this is impossible, and the most valuable household items of Akhmatova have moved from the apartment on Ordynka to Nikitsky Lane. Mikhail Ardov told Gazeta.Ru what the poet's fans should expect from the new museum.

- What will be the Moscow house of Akhmatova?

- We donated to the museum part of the furniture from Ordynka, most of our family library, a typewriter, for which my father worked and retyped Akhmatova's poems. In addition, the table at which Anna Andreevna made translations and wrote poetry. Alexey Vladimirovich Batalov taught lessons at the same table when he was little.

Mikhail Ardov

- At the same time, the auction house "In Nikitsky" is not a museum. Will it be able to fully meet the museum's tasks?

- It will not be so much an open museum as something like. The room in the "House of Books in Nikitsky" turned out to be suitable for creating a full-fledged imitation of our apartment on Ordynka. In addition, that apartment is a bit crowded: you can’t gather more than 20 people in it. And now we were able to get a more spacious room for the Akhmatova House, rooms more suitable for the museum.

There we will arrange literary events: for example, on March 5 we will hold a meeting in honor of the anniversary of the death of Anna Andreevna.

- Why is it still impossible to organize a museum in the house on Ordynka?

- Batalov and I wrote letters on this topic, and then. And we never got a response to them. In addition, the apartment on Ordynka was the legacy of my younger brother, and now it has become the legacy of his daughters. Thus, part of the apartment is lost to us.

— Can you tell the story of the exhibits that will be in the memorial house?

- All these exhibits have a history: here is the table where Akhmatova had breakfast, lunch and dinner for years, received her friends. At this table, in my memory, I read my translation of Faust back in the 40s, and a little later - the beginning of the novel Doctor Zhivago. Shostakovich, Ranevskaya, Brodsky, Ruslanova, Utyosov and many other famous people sat at this table. In addition, there is a table from a small room, which witnessed even more events - for example, the acquaintance of Anna Akhmatova and. These things were seen by interesting people, interesting conversations were conducted in their presence.

Graffiti portrait of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova in the courtyard of house number 17 on Bolshaya Ordynka. Based on the 1921 portrait of Yuri Annenkov.

The beauty of this work is that in house number 17 on Bolshaya Ordynka in apartment number 13 on the second floor, Anna Andreevna repeatedly stayed with the family of the writer and playwright Viktor Efimovich Ardov during her visits to Moscow. Here, Anna Andreevna, in aggregate, spent no less time than at home in the Leningrad "Fountain House". And "My City" is not about Moscow...

On the "Legendary Ordynka" in June 1941, her only meeting with Marina Tsvetaeva took place.

In the memoirs of Mikhail Ardov there is a phrase ... Akhmatova once said with a hint of august pride: Marina gave me Moscow ... Tsvetaeva's lines were meant:

I give you my bell hail,
Akhmatova! - and your heart to boot.

I will not enumerate all those who have visited her here as a guest. I will mention only three Nobel laureates - Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn and Brodsky.

Two days before her death, on March 3, 1966, Akhmatova left from here to the Domodedovo sanatorium, where she died ...

The gate of the forged lattice of house No. 17 is open. . If you go through the right gateway - where the monument is - turn left at the exit. If you go through the central doorway - after leaving it, turn right.

Husband in the grave, son in prison,
Pray for me.

Anna Akhmatova "Requiem" 1938.

P.S. Of course, things have a life of their own. In the courtyard with a graffiti portrait of Anna Andreevna, quatrains appeared both about Akhmatova and about Akhmatova. But the element of mystery and sincerity was gone. It looks like another project, whose incomprehensible.

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov's lines from the poem "She". April 1912.

Lines of Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva from the poem "Anna Akhmatova".

Lines of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova from the poem "Primorsky Sonnet".

As a matter of fact, the reason to visit the backyards of house 17 on Bolshaya Ordynka again was the documentary from the Searchers series Doomed to a Conspiracy, shown on the Kultura TV channel on November 30, 2015. About the participation of Nikolai Gumilyov in the conspiracy of the Petrograd military organization. So, several frames of the film were shot in the courtyard of the house 17 on Bolshaya Ordynka.

On Bolshaya Ordynka, at number 17, there is a large gray five-story house, two sections facing the "red line" of the street, one section - in the back of the yard. At first glance, the house is Soviet, 1930s, in a style transitional from constructivism to Stalinist architecture. But behind this Soviet façade lies a huge story. This is the estate of the merchants Kumanins, built at the end of the 18th century, and both Dostoevsky and Akhmatova managed to live in it. And the fence along Ordynka gives out the antiquity of the building, which certainly does not give the impression of a Soviet one.

The middle part of the courtyard section of the building is made up of chambers from the middle of the 18th century. At the end of the same century, the house was expanded; in the first half and the middle of the 19th century, the estate was owned by wealthy Kumanin merchants. His wife is his mother's sister, he lived with his aunt for some time in his childhood, in the 1830s. Some literary scholars even believe that this estate became the prototype of Parfyon Rogozhin's house from the novel The Idiot, and the Kumanin family and their entourage became the prototypes of some of the heroes of the work. And do not be surprised that the house according to the plot of the novel is located in St. Petersburg, on Gorokhovaya Street. It is believed that the writer described the house on Ordynka, its appearance and various everyday details.

But most Muscovites know this house precisely as the "Legendary Ordynka", the house in which she lived for almost 30 years, from 1938 to 1966. However, she had two addresses - Fontanka in Leningrad, and Ordynka in Moscow. Here she lived with her friends Ardovs, in apartment No. 13. This apartment is located in the southern wing of the building, the window of Akhmatova's room overlooks the courtyard. Despite this, a memorial plaque dedicated to Akhmatova hangs on the northern wing, which confuses people who are interested.

Shortly before Anna Akhmatova began to come here, in 1938, the two-story estate was built on with three more floors, and since then the building no longer looks like a merchant's estate, it looks more like a Soviet residential building. Only, as already mentioned above, the richly decorated fence of the 1860s, and the width of the windows on the first and second floors give away the age of the building.

The entire list of stars of literature of the mid-twentieth century visited the Ardovs' apartment with Akhmatova. And it was here, in this house, that the only meeting between Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva took place. The time was not easy, June 1941, just a couple of weeks before the war. And so Tsvetaeva came to Akhmatova, they talked for several hours and were completely disappointed in each other, did not accept each other in creativity. Akhmatova even said later about Tsvetaeva: “She came and sat for seven hours.”

In 2000, in the courtyard of the house, behind the fence, they erected the first monument in Russia to Akhmatova. The monument is unusual, because it was made by the sculptor V.A. Surovtsev according to the drawing by Amedeo Modigliani. At the moment, there is a question about the arrangement of the Anna Akhmatova museum in the Ardovs' apartment.