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The historical museum in the town is set up in 1930 as a collection in the Community Center Memorial "Paisii Hilendarski". The actual museum building was built in 1940, designed by the renowned architect Jordan Jordanov. The museum has more than 30 000 exhibits in separate collections: ethnographic, archaeological, artistic, photographic and documentary. The ethnographic exhibition shows jewelry, pottery, carving, costumes and textiles, wrought iron, showing life and livelihood of the population of the town in the past centuries. The archaeological exhibition contains mostly Thracian and late ancient artifacts. Artistic part is occupied by icons, prints, manuscripts, documents and pictures. The exposures occupy two floors. Richest and oldest is the ethnographic exhibition. Special attention is paid to the articles made of silver and gold, which impress with their quality of workmanship. There is also beautiful glassware. In the nineteenth century in the town was opened the first glassworks in Bulgaria. Some vessels made in this workshop can be seen today in the museum. The richest trove of late ancient cult pottery in the area is located here - objects from multiple shrines found on the shore of the Iskar Dam on one of its tides and dates from the first century BC. The other exhibits are of the village of Popovyane and are dated to the 3-4 century AD. From the findings in the museum shows that the rise of the town is related mostly with mined iron. Samokov masters learned from the West Saxon miners, known as "Sassi" and entered their model furnaces ("vidni"), blacksmith anvils("madani") and large hammers driven by water power, called "samokovi". The name of the city comes from these hammers. Surprising discovery for visitors is the collection of cameos. Interesting are the skillful works of the famous Samokov art school, where first place undoubtedly belongs to Zachary Zograf. There are preserved his personal belongings, icons and pictures. Particularly noteworthy is a portrait of a Greek girl - certificate of unrequited love of the famous master. The museum preserves over 3,500 artworks, including paintings by Christo Yonchev - Kriskarets, icons and portraits of Hristo Dimitrov, Zachary Zograf, Stanislav Dospevski, Hristo Yovevich, Ivan Ikonopisetz, Nikola Obrazopisov and other representatives of the Samokov School of Art, sketches and drawings and personal belongings of Obrazopisov. Part of the collection was donated by the collector Boyan Radev. Besides works of art, the museum stores also books of exceptional value and historical significance. The most important of these is the so-called "Fish Primer", whose author is Peter Beron. The museum has preserved and printing machine that belonged to Nikola Karastoyanov, and many other personal belongings, books and supplies for the printing of the famous publisher. In the courtyard of the museum there is a lapidarium. The most interesting exhibit there is a Thraco-roman funeral sarcophagus dated to the II-III century AD. Also can be seen sculptures of Zachary Zograf and Nikola Karastoyanov.