The Tomsk Regional Museum of Local History (Tomsky Oblastnoy Kraevedchesky Muzey) is the city's main museum and the best place to start understanding the region. It covers an enormous scope: prehistoric finds from Siberian burial mounds, the Cossack conquest and colonisation of Siberia, the indigenous peoples of western Siberia, natural history of the Tom River basin, and the role of Tomsk as a centre of exile and of learning in imperial Russia.
The collections of indigenous ethnography are particularly strong, with items from Khanty, Selkup, and other Siberian peoples — clothing, tools, ceremonial objects, and recordings. The archaeological sections include bronze-age metalwork and medieval artefacts from the steppe cultures that preceded Russian settlement.
The museum also has a section on Tomsk's wooden architecture with detailed plans and photographs of the best surviving examples — pick up their guide map before walking the wooden architecture district. The building itself is a solid Soviet-era structure on Lenin Square. Labels are mostly in Russian, but staff can often provide basic English explanations on request.