The Samara Regional Museum of Local History named after P. V. Alabin is one of the oldest museums in the Volga region. Currently, it is located in several buildings. The main building, which was previously a branch of the Central Museum of V. I. Lenin, was built in 1989 and includes 2,500 sq. m. for exhibitions and displays, a cinema-lecture hall for 270 seats, as well as a library with a reading room. Here are the main exhibitions, storage rooms for collections, an art workshop, a photo salon, a café for 40 seats, a museum shop, and an information center.

The museum is visited by more than 205,000 people annually. Its collections hold over 180,000 museum items, including rich archaeological and natural science collections, as well as paleontological, mineralogical, zoological, and botanical collections. Of particular interest are the numismatic collection, rare books from the 18th and 19th centuries, documents from the 18th and 20th centuries, as well as collections of cold and firearms from Russia and Western and Eastern countries from the 14th to the 20th centuries.

In the main building of the museum, exhibitions dedicated to the nature of the region stand out, such as "From Sea Lizard to Steppe Marmot" and "Four Tables. The Life Cycle of the Peoples of the Middle Volga." In 2000, the museum established international ties with the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

In 2006 and 2007, a joint exhibition project "Masters of the Steppes" was implemented in Canada, which has no analogs in world practice. The results of many years of archaeological research were used to create this Russian-Canadian exhibition. The result was a scientific work "Masters of the Steppes: Ancient Nomads of Canada and Russia," published in English, French, and Russian. For the first time within a single exhibition, it was possible to compare the lifestyle, hunting methods, dwellings, and art of ancient nomads of North America and the Steppe Volga region. From June 2008 to February 15, the exhibition took place at the Samara Regional Museum of Local History, attracting 53,000 visitors.

The museum successfully applies a project-based approach. Over the past 10 years, dozens of projects have been implemented with the support of such funds as the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, IREX, the President of the Russian Federation Fund, the Potanin Foundation, and others.

The museum was one of the first to actively implement information technology. All workplaces are automated and connected in a single network with Internet access. The Samara Museum was one of the first in Russia to implement the accounting and fund program KAMIS. The museum's electronic database is constantly growing and currently contains 50,000 units.

The museum has participated three times in the All-Russian Festival "Intermuseum." At the first festival in 1999, it received a diploma for the best thematic exhibition. In 2003, it was awarded a special diploma "For Mercy" for the best socially-oriented project. In 2008, with the project "Horizon, 120," the museum became one of the three nominees for the Grand Prix of the competition.