Originally the private collection of Paul Du Brux, one of the French nobles who emigrated to New Russia during the French Revolution, the museum was officially chartered in 1826 by I. P. Blaramberg. In 1835 the Odessa architect G. I. Torichelli designed a new building for it on Mt. Mithradat, modeled on the Athenian temple of Hephaestion, close comrade of Alexander the Great. This was destroyed in the Crimean War, and many of the treasures that had not already been sent to the Hermitage now ended up in the British Museum.
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