The museum consists of four branches: the "Plotnikov House Museum", the "Kudyakov Estate Museum", the "Kuzma Minin Museum", and the glass museum "Black Swan". Three of them are located in the historical center of Balakhna, not far from each other. These museums grew out of the Balakhna Local History Museum, one of the oldest in the Nizhny Novgorod region, founded in 1927. Its collections hold about 19,000 exhibits.

Each branch has its own focus and areas of work. The "Plotnikov House Museum" is dedicated to the history of the region from ancient times and includes an exhibition hall and a lace-making workshop, a traditional craft of Balakhna from the 18th-19th centuries. The "Kuzma Minin Museum", the only one in Russia, is located in the cultural center "House of Moscow" and was built in 2009 with funds from the Moscow Government in honor of the local hero. The museum's exhibition is dedicated to Kuzma Minin, the events of the Time of Troubles, and the formation of the Nizhny Novgorod militia.

The Kudyakov Estate is a complex with a park that showcases merchant and petty-bourgeois life and features a workshop for making whistling pots. The estate also specializes in hosting folklore events.

Since August 20, 2016, the only glass museum in the Nizhny Novgorod region, "Black Swan", has been opened in the village of Konevo in the Balakhna district.