[1] It is housed in the Château de Vizille, which has a long history of artistic conservation, and is home to a documentation centre on the French revolutionary period.

France ceded the castle and its domain to the General Council of Isère, which was entrusted with giving it a prestigious cultural role, in 1973.

On 21 July 1788, during the presidency of the count of Morges,[3] the Assembly of Vizille met in the castle's jeu de paume room after the 7 June Day of the Tiles in Grenoble.

Pope Pius VI spent a night in the castle at the invitation of owner Claude Perier on 5 July 1799, and Napoleon stopped there during his return from the island of Elba on 7 March 1815.

In 1862, after Adolphe's bankruptcy, the Académie des Beaux-Arts classified the castle as a monument historique and Henry Fontenilliat (step-father of Auguste Casimir-Perier) became the new owner.

For the centenary of the Assembly of Vizille on 21 July 1888, President Sadi Carnot dedicated a statue of Liberty (also called Marianne) in front of the castle.

After the 1981 election of François Mitterrand, the 2 March 1982 decentralization law permitted a museum dedicated to the French Revolution far from Paris.

Two people contributed to the museum's founding: Departmental Archives of Isère director Vital Chomel and historian Robert Chagny, curator of its first temporary exhibition.

In November 1987, work began on the Hall of Columns (later called the Republic Room) two large staircases ascending from the current entrance, and elevator access to all levels of the museum.

Of the statues, several busts are faithful representations of Antoine Barnave, Bailly, Mirabeau, Louis XVII, Robespierre, Danton and his wife Antoinette, and General Lafayette.

Other painters are present in the rooms with Louis-Pierre Baltard, Pierre-Nicolas Legrand de Lérant, Nanine Vallain, Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, Johann Baptist von Lampi the Elder, Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller, Antoine-François Callet, Alfred Elmore, Auguste Vinchon, Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux, Charles Louis Müller or Jacques-Louis David.

In addition to busts and paintings of revolutionary-era figures, it contains documentation of various aspects of the French Revolution, including its artistic and cultural impacts.

The library was named in June 2005 for historian Albert Soboul, the foremost French authority on the revolutionary era (who bequeathed his collection of books on the revolution to the museum before his death in 1982).