The museum belongs to the Kozani Literature and Arts Association. It was founded in 1969 and has been housed in a six-storey building constructed in the traditional West Macedonian style in Kozani town centre since 1987. A new four-storey building was erected nearby in 1993.

Through the museum, the Association hopes to preserve the monuments and other aspects of Greek heritage in the Kozani area and in Western Macedonia more generally.

In the basement of the main building are the natural history collections, which include 220 medicinal and aromatic plants, rocks, minerals, insects, petrified tree trunks, animals, and fossilised marine species, a reconstruction of a small cave near Polymylos with stalactites and stalagmites, and various species of local flora and fauna. One showcase displays examples of teratogenesis in the animal world.

On the ground floor, which is an interior courtyard, are a traditional oven, a well, and reconstructions of the life of farmers and woodcutters. The history and folklore sections occupy the upper storeys of the museum. On the first and second floors, visitors learn about the evolution of culture in the Kozani area from Neolithic to modern times, and about the struggles waged by the Greek people in the twentieth century.

On the third and fourth floors are reconstructions of the rural and light industrial occupations of the olden days (goldsmithery, coppersmithery, bell-founding, gunsmithery, saddlery, steelyard making, farriery, and so on). The fifth floor displays 58 men’s and women’s traditional costumes of Western Macedonia. On the sixth floor there are reconstructions of a number of rooms from old town houses in Kozani (1650–1850): the ‘Kitchen’, ‘K. Gertsos’s Room’ (the bedroom of an old town house), ‘G. Sakellarios’s Room’ (the sitting-room of a two-storey town house of the 18^th century which was demolished in 1976), the ‘Women’s Workroom’, with the appurtenances and tools of domestic work, the ‘Room of Tradas or Bassayannis’ built with materials from the 17^th century town house of the same name, a room displaying the ‘Bride’s Bottom Drawer’, and a small ‘Cellar of Sweets and Treats’.

In the new building are displayed paintings by Manolis Dragoyas, Vassilis Hristou, and other noted artists, icons and ecclesiastical objects, a collection of sketches of the traditional town houses of Kozani, a collection of radios (1930–60), traditional costumes from all over Greece, and a collection of Greek postage stamps from 1861–1998.

The museum runs educational programmes for schoolchildren, involving guided tours and games.