The History and Archived History files are in fact an SQLite databases.

You can open them using SQLite Database Browser or one of the many other programs that can open SQLite databases.

I think this is no longer possible

Edit: I think you can't view archived history anymore. See the comments to the other answers.

My old answer

Download ChromeHistoryView (freeware). Click "Options > Advanced Options". Point the tool to the location of your Archived History file.

The tool is made for Windows.

If you don't have access to a Windows PC, that's okay. I've found that it works fine in Wine, so you can also use it on Mac and Linux.

History older than 90 days is stored in the Archived History sqlite database file. As with the Chrome install, the actual location of the actual sqlite file varies by operating system. Once it is located you may have to close Google Chrome to unlock the file then open it with your favorite sqlite data browser.

Windows XP

C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Archived History

Windows 7 or Vista

C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Archived History

Mac OS X

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Archived History

Linux

~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Archived History

As of the writing of this comment the Archived History database has the following tables:

meta
urls
visits
visit_source
keyword_search_terms

To query the file by visit and URL

--- Code below finds visits between 01/01/2013 and 02/01/2013 
--- on a windows machine which explains the timestamp conversion   
SELECT 
visits.visit_time
, datetime(visits.visit_time/1000000-11644473600,'unixepoch','localtime')
, urls.url, urls.title
FROM visits
LEFT JOIN urls ON visits.url = urls.id 
WHERE visits.visit_time > (strftime('%s','2013-01-01') + 11644473600) * 1000000
AND visits.visit_time < (strftime('%s','2013-02-01') + 11644473600) * 1000000
LIMIT 100

There is no Archived History in new Chrome versions. I developed a Chrome extension U History (available on chrome web store) to save your history to you Google Drive in months. It will automatically save once you authorized (If you want to make sure the history are saved you can do manually). Moreover you can read your saved history. If you run into any problems or find any bugs pls feel free to contact me.