The Historical Museum is the best first stop if you want to give Gorna Oryahovitsa more than a station-platform glance. Its collections cover archaeology, ethnography, the Bulgarian Revival, and modern history, with particular attention to the town's role in the April Uprising and the First Revolutionary District.
It is a modest municipal museum, not a blockbuster, but it does its job. Visit before heading to Rachovets Fortress, because the museum gives context to the older settlement and the later railway town.