The Irkutsk local history museum is one of the oldest Russian museums. It was initiated and established by the governor of Irkutsk F. Klichka in 1782. The building of the history department of the Irkutsk local history museum was built on donations of Irkutsk merchants in 1883-1891 on the place of a wooden building burned down in 1879. In the XIX century the East Siberian department of the Russian imperial geographical society, the first research institution in Eastern Siberia, was located in this building. There are memorial plaques with names of outstanding scientists and travellers (such as Krasheninnikov, Bering, Laksman, Georgi, Pallas, Przhevalsky, Vrangel, Chersky and many others) on the museum’s walls. A unique ethnographical collection of everyday life objects, clothes, arms, objects of religious worships of Siberian nations, as well as rare documents dated to the XVII century is presented in the museum.