House No. 3 on Bolshaya Pushkarskaya is known as the House of Vasily Stepanovich and Ekaterina Petrovna Kirillov. Architect Breev built the house in 1900, and in 1908 technician Fomichev remodeled its right side at the owners' request. The Kirillovs and their relatives occupied the building until the Great Patriotic War. The entire large family perished during the blockade. In the spring of 1915, Anna Akhmatova stayed at the Kirillov House after moving to Petersburg from Tsarskoye Selo and before heading to Slepnevo.

The house, which she beautifully called a "pagoda" because of its rather intricate architecture with some Asian influences: sculptural griffins, women dressed in unusual chitons, and some Indian-style columns thickened in the middle like bowling pins in the entrances. Sphinxes adorn its facade, and the "gatekeepers" of both main entrances facing Pushkarskaya are two pairs of sculptures. To the left of the entrance stands a girl with a jug, to the right—a young man, both in Greek attire.

This was the house where Grebetskaya Street ended, Akhmatova recalls: “This house was called the ‘Pagoda.’ There was a damp and dark room, the weather was very bad, and there I fell ill with tuberculosis, that is, I developed bronchitis. A completely monstrous bronchitis. It was the first time in my life that I coughed. And from that bronchitis everything started.”

At first, Akhmatova traveled to the infirmary from Tsarskoye Selo, where they lived, and then, to be closer, she rented a room nearby for two months—on Bolshaya Pushkarskaya. "Thin, tall, slender, with a proud tilt of a small head. A nose with a hump, dark hair cut short with bangs on the forehead, gathered at the back with a high Spanish comb... Stern eyes. She could not be unnoticed. One could not pass by her without admiring her." From 1915, living under one roof, they had long stopped living together—they remained friends. Even their son did not bring them closer. "We even quarreled because of him," Gumilev recalled later.

Akhmatova had heartfelt attachments. She later admitted she also "hurried to live and reckoned with nothing." She already had a beautiful romance with Modigliani in Paris, a letter from whom, hidden in a book, Gumilev once found; a romantic adventure with the artist Sudeikin, to whom she dedicated several poems; a short but passionate affair with the young composer Artur Lurye. And even earlier, she confessed to Gumilev that she had another first love. Because of this, Gumilev would later attempt to take his own life. Yes, Akhmatova had heartfelt attachments, but happiness in love, it seems, never happened. By 1915, she would already say that she "never knew what happy love was...".

One of her romances was ongoing when she moved here—to Pushkarskaya, 3. The romance with Boris Vasilyevich von Anrep began half a month before the move. She lived here with memories of that evening and two days—"on the third day he left." He left for the front. Surprisingly, she would dedicate more than thirty poems to Anrep. Anrep himself recalled their affair later: "We rode in sleds, dined in restaurants, and all the time I asked her to read me poems; she smiled and hummed them in a quiet voice. Often we were silent and listened to all the sounds around us. During one of our meetings in 1915, I spoke about my disbelief and the futility of religious dreams. A. A. sternly reproached me, pointing to the path of faith as the key to happiness. 'Without faith, it is impossible...' But I never received a single letter from her, and I did not write any, and she did not 'come to the aid of my unbelief'..."

Akhmatova saw Anrep off to the front, from where he would try to reach her.

Sources:

http://ahmatova.niv.ru/ahmatova/about/nedoshivin-progulki/portret-lyubvi.htm

https://www.spb.kp.ru/daily/26721/3746766/