While in St. Petersburg, the troubled author Alexander Pushkin met Anna Kern (1800 - 1879) with whom he had an affair. It’s widely rumoured that he dedicated one of his most famous poems to this Russian socialite who eventually moved to Riga as the wife of General Ye. F. Kern. He wrote several love letters to her over the course of a year and a half, but is said to have later despised her. A small statue of the scandalous Anna Kern, who died in abject poverty in Moscow, is located next to the Ave Sol concert hall, which was once the church of the Russian garrison over which her former husband presided.