History museums have reached in our day their full development and maturity. They represent, according to the famous French museologist G. Η. Riviere, the broadest and most manifold branch of museology.
It is commonly accepted that museums contribute to the representation of the historic memory. However, museums with exhibitions of a strictly historic character are still few, although a tendency of catching up with this pursuit has become recently quite clear. This tendency is of course closely related to the development of the educational function of museums and the progress of historic studies. According to experts, museums of general history must base their scientific and social role οn the following fundamental elements:
a. use of the science of history;
b. collection and research οn the objects to be exhibited; and
c. efforts for the creation of an exhibition of high aesthetic and educational standards.
The full acceptance of the fact that history is the science οn which the historical museum must be founded determines not only the method of collecting and researching but also the very content of the Museum.
The historic objects, as a source of museographic material are of unique importance to historic research and for the understanding and transmission of knowledge of history.
Needless to say that the most particular activity of a Museum, the nucleus of all the work done in there, is the exhibition of objects. This is the language of the Museum and its creation demands an interdisciplinary approach.
History museums as museums of the history of nations or cities or broader regions or even of historic genres serνe as centres for education and aesthetic refinement.
The history museum apart from being a “political museum”, more than any other kind of museum, is an institution with a specific scientific physiognomy, a complex organism that embraces the most essential fields of human activity and seeks to be incorporated in the modern system of democratic education for all.
