The regional history and local lore museum in Atyrau covers the history of the area from its days as a Kazakh nomadic territory through the Russian imperial period (when the city was known as Guriev) to the oil boom of the post-Soviet era. The collections include ethnographic material on the Kazakh way of life, archaeological finds from the Caspian steppe, and documents and photographs from the oil industry.
It is a modest provincial museum by international standards, but if you are spending more than a day in Atyrau it is worth a visit — the historical context it provides for the city's extraordinary transformation from a small fishing settlement into a major petroleum hub in a single generation is genuinely interesting.