The National Museum of Literature “Mihail Kogălniceanu” was established in the autumn of 1965 under the auspices of the Writers’ Union of Moldova. The museum’s collection comprises over 100 thousand exhibits, including books, art objects, and documents.

Originally named the Republican Museum of Literature of the MSSR, it received several exhibition rooms, a basement for storing collections, staff offices, and a library after the opening of the present House of Writers in Chisinau. At that time, the museum employed 35 people, including researchers in three scientific sections.

In 1983, it was named after Dimitrie Cantemir. In 1990, it was disbanded as a museum and became the “Mihail Kogălniceanu” National Centre for Literary Studies and Museography. In 1997, it was renamed the Museum of Romanian Literature “Mihail Kogălniceanu.” By government decision, it was transformed into a national museum as of January 1, 2013, transferring from the Writers’ Union to the Ministry of Culture and gaining the right to manage its branches. In 2015, the Grigore Vieru House-Museum was inaugurated in the village of Pererîta, and in 2019, the Alexandru Donici House-Museum in the village of Donici was also transferred to the museum.

The museum did not originate from existing collections or funds. Most pieces in the collection were amassed between 1965 and 1991 through the research and collection efforts of the institution’s museographers. In 2019, the museum counted 147,386 items, including books, manuscripts, a rich fine art collection, photographs, audio cassettes, video recordings, etc. The manuscript collection is the largest, with 28,000 items, followed by the book collection with about 22,000 volumes from the 16th to the 21st century. The oldest book is an edition of “Beati Dionysii Areopagitae martyris inglyti” by St. Dionysius the Areopagite (1572). Based on the museum’s exhibits, house-museums for “Alexander Donich,” “Constantine Stamati,” and “Alexei Mateevich” have been established. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the museum’s collections was destroyed, including part of the patrimony gathered under the founding director Gheorghe Cincilei, due to disapproval from communist authorities.