Erected in 1892, it was first built in a five-room apartment, inside one small building on Rosetta Street (later Avenue Canope and now Horriya).

[citation needed] The museum's collection is the product of donations from wealthy Alexandrians as well as of excavations led by successive directors of the institution, both within the town and in its environs.

Certain other objects have come from the Organization of Antiquities at Cairo (particularly those of the Pharaonic period) and from various digs undertaken at the beginning of the century in Fayoum and at Benhasa.

Housed within a historic building whose beautiful neoclassical facade of six columns and pediment bears the large Greek inscription ‘MOYΣEION’ ("MOUSEION").

[6] On 11 October 2023, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly attended the reopening of the museum, following 18 years of renovations.