The Paul Păltănea History Museum is housed in a cream-coloured neoclassical mansion on Strada Alexandru Ioan Cuza, a few minutes' walk from Eminescu Park. The collection covers the lower Danube from prehistory through the Roman frontier, the medieval principality of Moldavia, and the city's commercial heyday in the 19th century.
The most interesting rooms deal with Galați's free-port era (1837–1881), when the city was one of the busiest grain ports in Europe, full of British shipping agents, Greek merchants and Russian consuls. Old maps, ship's papers and engravings give a sense of a small Black Sea boom town that has largely been forgotten.