Today's museum building was built especially for the historical museum, which was newly founded in 1872, and was ceremoniously handed over to its destination in May 1883. Its architect was Vladimir Osipovich Sherwood, who is considered to be one of the main representatives of the "Russian style", a variant of historicism based on traditional Russian architecture, which was widely used at the time. The museum building looks correspondingly "Old Russian": the facades are decorated with arched windows and ornaments reminiscent of traditional Russian Orthodox churches, several decorative towers reminiscent of some of the Kremlin towers are attached to the sides, and the shape of the roof is reminiscent of the Great Kremlin Palace in the Kremlin, a form of the Russian mansion that was particularly preferred in the 16th and 17th centuries.