Nashville is the city where American music goes to work. Founded as Fort Nashborough on a bend of the Cumberland River in 1779 and Tennessee's capital since 1843, it earned the name Music City the hard way: a radio barn dance that became the Grand Ole Opry, a tabernacle that became the Mother Church of Country Music, and a few blocks of studios that turned a Southern river town into the place where songs get written, recorded and sold. Today it is a boomtown of cranes and bachelorette parties, but the history is still right there on the sidewalk, and the best way to hear it is with a self-guided audio guide in your ears while the live bands play through the open doors.
Start on Lower Broadway. The Honky Tonk Highway runs a few neon blocks from the river toward the Ryman, and from late morning until well past midnight every doorway leaks a different band playing for tips. Robert's Western World and Tootsies Orchid Lounge have been stepping stones for singers who later filled arenas; an audio guide tells you which ones, and why the alley behind Tootsies mattered so much to the Opry's stars.
The Mother Church and the Opry
A block off Broadway stands Ryman Auditorium, built in 1892 by riverboat captain Thomas Ryman as the Union Gospel Tabernacle after a tent-revival preacher converted him. It became the Grand Ole Opry's home from 1943 to 1974, and on 8 December 1945 a young Earl Scruggs walked onto its stage with Bill Monroe and bluegrass was born. The Grand Ole Opry itself began as the WSM Barn Dance on 28 November 1925 and is now the longest-running radio show in the United States, broadcasting from its purpose-built house out by Opryland. Hear both stories where they happened: the pews of the Ryman still curve around the stage, and the Opry House has a circle of the old Ryman's oak floor set into its own.
Music Row and the museums of Music City
The business end of the city is Music Row, a leafy pair of avenues where publishers and labels work out of converted bungalows. Its most famous address is Historic RCA Studio B, the room where Elvis Presley cut more than two hundred songs and Dolly Parton recorded "Jolene." Downtown, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is called the Smithsonian of country music for good reason: a $100 million expansion doubled it to 350,000 square feet of stage costumes, instruments and gold records. Across the street, the Johnny Cash Museum fills in the Man in Black's story with handwritten lyrics and rare recordings. Each has its own audio guide, so you can move from one to the next with the narrative unbroken.
The Athens of the South
Nashville's other nickname comes from its universities, and the city took it literally. For the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition it built a full-scale Parthenon, which still stands in Centennial Park with a 42-foot gilded Athena inside. Uphill from the river, the Tennessee State Capitol is one of the oldest working statehouses in the country, a Greek Revival temple whose architect, William Strickland, is buried in its walls. An audio guide walking you from the Capitol down to the Bicentennial Mall explains how a frontier capital decided to dress like Athens.
Jefferson Street and the other Nashville
North of downtown, Jefferson Street was the heart of Black Nashville, a strip of clubs where Jimi Hendrix and Little Richard played before they were famous, and where hot chicken was born at Prince's Hot Chicken Shack in 1945. Nearby, the Fisk Jubilee Singers set out from Fisk University after the Civil War and sang spirituals to the world; Jubilee Hall, which their tours paid for, still stands on campus. The National Museum of African American Music on Broadway ties the threads together, from gospel to hip-hop, and its audio guide is the right companion for a walk up Jefferson Street afterwards.
Across the Cumberland and out to the Hermitage
The John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge is the city's best free view, a 1909 truss bridge turned promenade with the skyline on one side and Nissan Stadium on the other. Further out, two plantations tell harder stories. Andrew Jackson's Hermitage, the seventh president's estate, is one of the best-preserved early presidential homes in the country and does not look away from the enslaved people who built it. Belle Meade Historic Site & Winery was a thoroughbred stud farm whose bloodlines run to Seabiscuit and Secretariat. Both are a short drive from downtown and both have audio guides that let you take the grounds at your own pace.
Getting around
Downtown, the Gulch, Germantown and Music Row are all walkable from Broadway, and the free Music City Circuit bus loops the center. The Opry, the Hermitage and Belle Meade need a car or rideshare. Spring and fall are the comfortable seasons; summer is hot and humid, and the honky tonks are full every night of the year.