Its main office is at the Palacio Aldama, in the municipality of Centro Habana. It emerged as a result of the joining of some institutions that had preceded it like: the Department of the History of Cuba (Departamento de Historia de Cuba) of the  Institute of History of the Cuban Academy of Sciences (Instituto de Historia de la Academia de Ciencias de Cuba), founded in 1962; the Institute of the History of the Communist movement and the Socialist Revolution of Cuba (Instituto de Historia del Movimiento Comunista y la Revolución Socialista de Cuba), which was founded in 1972 and the Center for the Studies of Military History  .The Institute has a specialized library, that has the name of "Carlos Del Toro" to honor the outstanding work of this researcher. There are approximately 60 000 volumes in this library, among them we can mention books, booklets and periodic publications of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries.