Above all, the donation of the then Governor-General Axel Graf von Löwen to the city of Stralsund can be regarded as the foundation of a rich collection.

Von Löwen bequeathed in 1761 in his Testament his extensive art collection of the city.

The second room contained unsorted and uncategorized prehistoric finds, an Indian costume, 17th and 18th century furniture, hand tools, and natural history pieces.

In 1896 Baier was able to move into new, larger rooms for the museum in Badenstraße; There is now the city library housed.

In 1921, the city council decided to provide the museum with the rooms of the former orphanage in the old St. Catherine's Monastery.

After Fritz Adler had gone to the western part of Germany, in 1950 the Käthe Rieck who had been working in the museum since 1921 took over the management.

As of March 1, 2014, the Hanseatic city of Stralsund has permanently closed the museum's warehouse for visitors.

The reason for this was building supervisory requirements for fire protection, the implementation of which would have been too expensive for the city.

[2] The exhibitions in the former St. Catherine's Monastery address not only the history of the area and the history of the city, but also the handicraft of the region - here is the Hiddensee treasure - the Visual Arts - mainly paintings by Caspar David Friedrich as well as Philipp Otto Runge - as well as historical children's toys.

Worthy of particular mention are the furnishing items exhibited here, which primarily come from the area of the peninsula Darß and the Mönchgut and date in part from the early years of the 20th century.

On the basis of archaeological finds about 10,000 years of human history in the region of Western Pomerania and Rügen are presented.

Small instruments made of flint and scraper, core and disc axles are among the exhibits.

Ceramics made from fired clay from the two ethnic groups living in the region is preserved in their typical forms and ornaments.

In 2025, the Stralsund Museum decided to restitute an object that had been looted from the Jewish businessman and art collector John Horneburg under the Nazi regime.