In Kyiv, Anna began corresponding with Nikolai Gumilev, who had courted her back in Tsarskoye Selo. At that time, the poet was in France publishing the Paris-based Russian weekly "Sirius." In 1907, Anna Akhmatova's first published poem, "On his hand many shining rings…," appeared on the pages of "Sirius." Gumilev proposed to Akhmatova almost five times and twice attempted suicide because of her. His endless courtship and her refusals, as Akhmatova recalled, even tired her "gentle mother," who reproachfully said: "The fiancée is no fiancée," which seemed to Anna almost "blasphemous." Only after Gumilev's duel with another poet, Max Voloshin (not because of Akhmatova but because of the poet Dmitrieva, the famous Cherubina de Gabriak), did Akhmatova suddenly agree to marry him. She admitted that she was convinced by Gumilev’s phrase in a letter: "I realized that in the world I am interested only in what relates to you." That’s when she agreed. And then, about two months before the wedding, she hastily wrote to a friend: "My bird... Pray for me... I want to die. You know everything, my only, beloved, dear... If only I knew how to cry..." By the way, none of Akhmatova’s relatives came to the wedding: her family considered the marriage to Gumilev "doomed," and, as it turned out, not without reason.

In April 1910, Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilev were married in a church ceremony near Kyiv, in the village of Nikolskaya Slobodka. After the wedding, Gumilev gave his wife a "personal residence permit" and deposited 2,000 rubles in a bank account in her name. "I wanted her to feel independent and fully provided for," he later told the poet Odoevtseva. However, at first, he reportedly treated his wife’s poems ironically, advising: "You, Anichka, should go into ballet—you are slender." And when someone praised her poems, he would smile mockingly in response: "You like it? Very glad. My wife also embroiders beautifully on canvas..."

After returning to St. Petersburg, Akhmatova enrolled in the Higher Historical-Literary Courses. At the beginning of her career, she followed the path of Acmeism—a new literary movement opposing the symbolism of the 19th century. Akhmatova, together with Gumilev, Gorodetsky, Mandelstam, and other poets, proclaimed the cult of concreteness, materiality, and the "tangibility" of literary images. During that period, she wrote many poems and quickly became popular in poetic circles.

From the summer of 1911 to 1916, Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilev lived in Tsarskoye Selo at Gumilev’s mother’s house, Malaya Street, house No. 64 (the house has not survived; now this is the site of house No. 57 on Malaya Street). The house stood opposite the building of the Nikolaev Male Classical Gymnasium. Before that, the family lived on Bulvarnaya Street, in the Georgievsky house, where the poet’s father died and where they married. That house has not survived either; now it is the site of house No. 57 on Malaya Street. The house stood almost opposite the Nikolaev Male Classical Gymnasium, which Nikolai Gumilev graduated from.

A description of Akhmatova and Gumilev’s house can be read in the memoirs of Sergei Yesenin’s visits to Tsarskoye Selo in 1915. The first trip took place on December 25, 1915: "And so a frosty morning came on December 25. From house 49 on the Fontanka River embankment, Yesenin and Klyuev set out. Somewhere along the way, they bought a fresh issue of the newspaper 'Exchange Gazette' and were pleased to see their poems published there. In high spirits, they boarded one of the small carriages of the Tsarskoye Selo train and were in Tsarskoye Selo by daytime. Malaya Street, where Gumilev and Akhmatova lived then, is about a twenty-minute walk from the station. The friends walked unhurriedly, admiring the small cozy mansions and snow-dusted bushes and trees. And finally, this quiet street appeared, where low wooden houses lined up in a row. On the left, in the distance, Yesenin and Klyuev saw the elegant three-story building of the Tsarskoye Selo Nikolaev Male Gymnasium, where until 1906 the poet I.F. Annensky was director, and where Nikolai Gumilev had recently studied. And a little closer, on the right, stood house number 63—the own house of Gumilev’s mother, Anna Ivanovna, purchased by her in the summer of 1911. Finally, from afar, AA showed: 'Here we are... See the green house on that side? That’s the Gumilevs’ house...' I saw a two-story, three-window upstairs and five-window downstairs, pretty wooden house with a small front garden, from which only one large, now bare tree rose high; several other small and frail trees did not dare to stretch their branches to the second-floor windows. The house seemed no different from those we had just passed by, and from thousands of others, creating such a familiar, ordinary genre for all small towns and settlements of the North, towns where, entering, one can confidently say that a big city is 30 or 50 versts away... We entered the yard—past the kitchen and bathroom windows, went around the house from the other side. A tiny garden—it adjoined a large dining room window, and behind it was the window of Nikolai Stepanovich’s room... For a minute or two, we stood silently, then AA turned and walked away... 'This little fence is also destroyed... Back then, everything was clean, tidy, painted. Now everyone is so used to seeing such destruction that they don’t even notice it...'"

The first window (on the side opposite the gate) was the window of her room. The next window was the library. The third window, the middle one, was a false window, it was there before and remains now. The other two windows were the living room windows... We approached the gate. AA showed me a tin board on this side of the house. On the board, in oil paints: "House of A. I. Gumileva."

Sources:

https://peterburg.center/story/peterburgskie-stihi-i-adresa-anny-ahmatovoy.html

https://www.citywalls.ru/house23248.html

http://ahmatova.niv.ru/ahmatova/about/nedoshivin-progulki/tuchka-dlya-poetov.htm