Like in most European states the collection of preciousnesses and remains of the national past has to see her origin is in the Middle Ages, this one in the close connection with the foundation of monastic treasure vaults, like also the decoration of feudal nobility residences.

Spare in the XV. Documents of important state occasions, valuable and decorated books and war trophies kept, became century in the lock of the dynasty Crnojevic in Cetinje while the palaces of the sea captains and noblemen were adorned with the objects brought of distant journeys or from the European art centers at the coast. St. Triphons resulted for collections of church objects of which most have both a literary one as artistic value in the treasure vaults of the cloister of Cetinje and the cathedral in Kotor at the same time.

The foundation of museums and plant of collections of valuable objects in which the values connected to the national past should be looked and cared with a knowledge of the subject should be for the Romanticism of great importance for the time since a consciousness developed into the foundation of special institutions from this like also in the young state of Montenegro in all of Europe.

With an ordinance of the King Nikola in 1868 all objects connected to the past which were in the treasure vault of the Residien then, billiards house, were explained and described as a museum to the state property. Toward the end of the XIX. Century was the building "Zetski cathedral" built and the first museum housed into this. After this the museum law was released from to 1896.

After the second World War the state museum was modernized and facilities like Njegos ', Ethonographisches and art museum as well as archive and protection of historical monuments institutions founded. Municipal as well as regional Muses and galleries were revealed to Kotor, Budva and Podgorica at that time in many montenegrinischen towns like e.g. in Herceg Novi.