The Local History Museum is located in the center of Odessa, in a two-story late Renaissance mansion built in 1876 by Odessa architect F. Gonsiorovsky and known as Novikov's House a>. The museum was opened on May 6, 1956 on the basis of the collections of the Odessa Defense Museum and the Regional Museum of Local Lore. The museum's collection includes 120 thousand exhibits telling about the history of Odessa and the region: documents signed by Catherine II and G. Potemkin, A. Suvorov and M. Kutuzov, I. de Ribas, printed publications, objects of applied art, collections of numismatics and weapons, portrait painting of the 18th - early 20th centuries, collections of icons, household items.
The museum has permanent exhibitions: "Old Odessa", "Odessa and the region in the Second World War 1939-1945", "Weapons from the museum's collection", an exposition of a separate exhibition hall "Stepova Ukraine".