Odessa Archaeological Museum is the oldest archaeological museum in Ukraine, founded in 1825 as a city museum of antiquities. The exposition is located in a two-storey building built in 1883 according to the project of the architect F. Gonsiorovsky. The main fund of the museum consists of 170,000 exhibits placed in ten halls - these are collections of antiquities from the south of Ukraine, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Italy, 55,000 coins. The museum's "Golden Pantry" exhibits items made of precious metals, starting from the beginning of the second millennium BC. e. The museum conducts research on archaeological sites of the Eneolithic and Bronze Age, the early Iron Age - in the lower reaches of the Danube, ancient times - on the banks of the Dniester estuary and the Odessa Bay, on Zmeiny Island. The Archaeological Museum conducts joint scientific activities with specialists from dozens of countries, participates in foreign exhibitions.
By order of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine in 2008, the museum's collections were given the status of "National Treasure".