The History and Folklore Museum occupies a 19th-century building in the old town and covers the more recent layers of Kalamata's past: the Ottoman period, the Greek War of Independence, and the agricultural and commercial life of Messenia through the 19th and 20th centuries.
The collection includes traditional costumes, weaving, pottery, and agricultural tools — the kind of material culture that tells you how people actually lived rather than just who ruled them. There is also a section on the great Kalamata earthquake of September 1986, which killed 20 people and left 12,000 homeless, and on the city's reconstruction in the years that followed. The museum is small and can be covered thoroughly in about an hour.