In Vologda there are over three dozen museums, most of which are branches of the Vologda State Historical, Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve (VGIAHMZ).

Especially among the museum branches stands the Resurrection Cathedral, inside of which there is a remarkable collection of canvases belonging to the Vologda Regional Art Gallery. The museum-reserve includes:

• the house museum of Peter the Great, the oldest museum in Vologda, the exposition of which consists of furniture and household items of the 17th and 18th centuries, items owned by Peter the Great;
• Exhibition complex "Vologda on the border of the 19-20 centuries", which occupies part of the estate of the merchant Samarin, also having a recreated merchant's shop - a museum salon-shop
• Museum "The World of Forgotten Things", telling about the culture of Russia before the Revolution;
• museum-apartment of KN Batyushkov, filled with personal things of the poet;
• house-museum of AF Mozhaisky, the famous Russian inventor in the field of aviation; there is also an exposition "Vologda's contribution to the development of aviation and cosmonautics", dedicated to those who came from the Vologda region, who linked their lives with aviation;
• The architectural and ethnographic museum of the Vologda region "Semenkovo", where the usual Russian village of the end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th centuries with its way of life, way of life and interiors was reproduced with incredible accuracy;
• museum "Literature and Art. Century 20th ", telling about the work of the poet NM Rubtsov;
• the museum "Vologda political exile", survived, as well as the theme of the exposition, a lot of "troubled days": firstly in this two-storey wooden house there lived the exiled to Vologda IV Stalin, then it was a museum dedicated to the "father of peoples", then transformed into The house-museum of the revolutionary activity of the Bolsheviks in the Vologda reference. For a while the museum was even closed, and was reborn only a few years ago. Today, his exposition is devoted to political exiles of the first half of the 19th - early 20th century.
• Museum of Pharmacy of the Vologda Region;
• Vologda House of Architects.

The lace museum opened in Vologda in 2011 is completely new, but its exhibits fully cover the not so short history of the art of weaving lace not only in the Vologda region, but also in many European countries: France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Slovakia, Spain.

For those who love contemporary art in Vologda, the "Red Bridge" gallery is open, where not only various exhibitions take place, but there is also a collection of modern paintings, graphics and photographs presented by gifted artists and photographers of our time with rather interesting views and ideas.

The works of Russian painters of the 18-20th centuries can be admired in the Vologda Art Gallery, where not only the masterpieces of Tropinin, Savrasov, Aivazovsky, Repin and other famous Russian artists are presented, but there is a department of decorative and applied art whose exposition is dedicated to folk art crafts in the Vologda region.

One more interesting museum of Vologda can not be ignored, in spite of the fact that it has already been closed: the Museum of the diplomatic corps. This museum was founded in 1997 in memory of how for 5 months of 1918 Vologda became the "diplomatic capital of Russia", fearing the capture of Petrograd by German troops. This private historical museum in Vologda lasted until the end of 2012 and was located in a wooden mansion, an architectural monument of the first third of the XIX century, where the American embassy was located just in 1918.