Kotel Natural History museum

Kotel Natural History Museum is a nature museum in Kotel, Bulgaria, and houses a large collection of specimens from the Eastern Balkan Mountains region. The collections are organized into sections such as paleontology, botany, invertebrates, and vertebrates, allowing visitors to explore different aspects of the region's natural world.

The foundation of this museum was laid by Vasil Georgiev, a local teacher who collected natural science objects from the Kotel area over many decades. The building itself was acquired in 1981 and later chosen to house this growing collection.

The museum displays local wildlife and plants of the region arranged in realistic natural settings, allowing visitors to see how different species live together. The exhibitions help people understand and appreciate the nature of the Balkan area.

The museum is housed in a building that is easy to reach on foot and contains several exhibition halls organized logically by scientific topics. Visitors can walk through the different rooms at their own pace and learn about the area's natural history.

The paleontology section holds a remarkable collection of over 100 fossil species from the Mesozoic era, including corals, snails, ammonites, and other marine remains. These rare pieces reveal that the region was once covered by seas before mountain formation occurred.