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The highest honor in Kotel enjoys the Pantheon of Georgi Rakovski, which is also a Museum of the Bulgarian Revival. It has preserved relics, valuable for every Bulgarian. It is located in the center of town and is a major tourist attraction.

The Pantheon was opened in 1981 on the occasion of the 1300th anniversary of the founding of Bulgaria. In it central place is given to the personality of Georgi Rakovski, but the museum also traces the fates of more than 200 Bulgarian educators, revolutionaries, and notables who lived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The museum is organized into four rooms in which the departments "Leaders", "Enlightenment", "Rebels" and "Revolutionaries" are located.

The first room of the museum, where the heart of Dr. Petar Beron is kept, is devoted also to Sofronii of Vratsa, who first transcribed Paisii Hilendarski’s "Slav-Bulgarian History", issued "Nedelnik" - the first printed book in modern Bulgarian and wrote the first Bulgarian autobiographical work. The room also traces the life of the tireless advocate for church independence Neophit Bozveli.

Exposures in other rooms of the museum keep the original documents and works of Dr Vasil Beron, a physician and public figure, of Atanas Granitski of шге translator and teacher Stefan Izvorski, they are recalling the work of Captain Georgi Mamarchev, leader of the conspiracy “Velchova zavera” in Tarnovo and track fates and actions of many deserving Kotel citizens throught the centuries.

Central place is given to Sabi Stoykov Popovich, who changed his name to Georgi Sava Rakovski - the first organizer and ideologist of the national liberation movement in Bulgaria in the nineteenth century. He is also known as the "father of the Bulgarian revolution". At the museum lie the remains of Rakovski, laid in a marble sarcophagus. It is covered with a bronze flag, which is embroidered the phrase "Freedom or death" and to it is laid the sword of the revolutionary.