The museum was opened in April 1970 in a house on the former Streletskaya Street, where the family of the inspector of public schools in the Simbirsk province, Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, rented an apartment in 1871 and 1875 from D. F. Zharkova. Here, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin spent his early childhood, and in August 1874, his younger brother Dmitry was born.

On the first floor of the house, there is a documentary exhibition dedicated to the period of the Ulyanov family’s life in Simbirsk, as well as the educational and social activities of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov, who was initially an inspector and later the director of public schools in the Simbirsk province. The second floor recreates the atmosphere of that time: furniture, books, household items from the 19th century, and authentic belongings of the Ulyanov family allow visitors to immerse themselves in the past, get acquainted with the family and the childhood years of the founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, as well as the life of the democratic intelligentsia of Simbirsk in the 1870s and 1880s.

The museum also organizes thematic exhibitions featuring works by both professional and amateur artists and photographers from Ulyanovsk. The museum houses a library of local historian Zh. A. Trofimov.