Three days in Nashville: a company town, and the company is songs

Two nights downtown: the country music archive, a letterpress shop and the Ryman, a state capitol and a Greek temple, an evening at the Opry, and a morning at Andrew Jackson's house.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Nashville
Places
8 across 3 days
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Nashville is a working music town before it is anything else. Songwriters here have day jobs writing songs, publishers occupy a row of houses on Music Row, and the honky tonks on Lower Broadway have live bands from ten in the morning until two the next morning, playing for tips, with no cover charge on the door.

That is the thing to understand before you arrive. The music is not an evening entertainment bolted onto a sightseeing trip; it is the reason the city exists in its current form, and the best of it is often free and in a bar at four in the afternoon.

Three days is enough for the museums, one night at the Opry, and a morning out of town. It is a small, flat, hot city that has grown very fast, and the compact bit a visitor cares about sits inside a mile of the river.

Highlights

  • Bands playing for tips in a Broadway bar at two in the afternoon, and being good
  • A letterpress shop still pulling gig posters off carved wood type, as it has since 1879
  • The Ryman, built as a tabernacle in 1892 and still the best room in the city to hear anything in
  • The Parthenon rebuilt at full size in a public park, with the goddess inside
  • The Opry broadcast live, still with the ads read out, still with a circle of the Ryman floor set into the stage
  • Hot chicken, which was invented here as an act of revenge and got out of hand

Where to stay

Nashville, two nights

Nashville was a river port and a railway junction before it was anything musical, and it became the centre of country music because a local insurance company started a radio station in 1925 and put a barn dance programme on it. That programme is still broadcast every week.

Stay downtown, in the Gulch or in East Nashville. Downtown puts you on top of the museums and the noise; the Gulch is ten minutes' walk south and quieter; East Nashville is across the river, cheaper, and where the people who play in the bars actually live.

Day by day

Day 1 in Nashville

The Hall of Fame, a print shop and the mother church of country music

Everything on the first day is within a few blocks of Broadway, so this works whenever you land.

The Country Music Hall of Fame is the serious one and much better than a genre museum has any right to be. It runs chronologically from string bands and radio barn dances through the Nashville sound to the present, with Hank Williams's suits, Elvis's gold Cadillac and a rotunda at the end where the plaques of the inducted hang under a ring of windows.

The ticket includes the letterpress shop that the museum now runs, which is the best twenty minutes in the city. It has been printing show posters from carved wood type since 1879, using the original blocks, and the presses are running while you stand there.

Two blocks north is the Ryman Auditorium, and if one building explains this city it is that one. A riverboat captain called Thomas Ryman got religion at a tent revival and built it in 1892 as somewhere permanent to hold one, which is why you sit in church pews and why musicians call it the mother church. The Grand Ole Opry moved in in 1943 and broadcast from the stage for thirty-one years. The daytime visit is self-guided and lets you stand on that stage; if the calendar allows it, buy a ticket to whatever is playing there that night instead, because the room is the reason people record live albums in it.

Then Broadway, from late afternoon. The Ryman's back door opens onto an alley, and on the far side of that alley is the rear entrance of the honky tonk where Opry performers used to slip out for a drink between segments. The bars are free, the bands start early, and the tip bucket goes round between songs. Two hours in three different rooms is the right way to do it.

  1. 12:00

    Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

    Culture

    Two to three hours. Book online for a few dollars less. The combined ticket with the print shop, the Ryman and the historic studio out on Music Row is the one most people should buy.

  2. 14:45

    Hatch Show Print

    Other

    A working letterpress shop, not a display. Twenty minutes to watch, longer if you buy a poster, and the seconds bin by the door is where the bargains are.

  3. 15:45

    Ryman Auditorium

    Culture

    The self-guided daytime visit runs until late afternoon and includes the stage; check the show calendar first, because tour hours shorten on performance days. An hour, and the balcony is worth climbing to for the sightlines alone.

  4. 17:45

    Dinner, then the honky tonks

    Eat

    Eat first, because the bars are for standing in. Anywhere a block off Broadway will be cheaper and quieter than anywhere on it.

  5. 19:30

    Tootsie's Orchid Lounge

    Other

    The purple one halfway along Lower Broad, three floors, a band on each, and the one with the actual history behind it. No cover, no seats after eight, and carry small notes for the buckets.

With more time: The Johnny Cash museum is a block east of the print shop: small, cheap and unashamedly for fans, with the handwritten lyrics and the stage clothes and the letters, and it takes an hour. The pedestrian bridge over the Cumberland is two minutes from Broadway and the view back at the skyline from the middle of it is the one on the postcards. It also drops you in East Nashville, where the bars have no bachelorette parties in them.

Day 2 in Nashville

A capitol, a Parthenon, and a night at the Opry

Away from the music for most of the day, and back to it in the evening.

The Tennessee State Capitol is on the hill north of downtown, a Greek Revival building whose architect is buried in one of its walls, and free tours run through the day. Below it, a state park lays the whole of Tennessee out as a 200-foot granite map you walk across, with a wall carved with the state's history along one side.

The state museum at the bottom of that mall is one of the largest in the country and free, and the Civil War rooms are the reason to go: Tennessee sent more soldiers to both armies than any other state and the museum does not tidy that up.

In the afternoon, drive or ride west to the big park on West End Avenue for the Parthenon, which is the strangest thing in Nashville and the best. It was put up at full size for the state centennial in 1897, made permanent in concrete in the 1920s, and it contains a 42-foot gilded Athena that was added in 1990. The city has called itself the Athens of the South since well before any of this.

In the evening, out to the Opry House. The Grand Ole Opry has been broadcast live every week since 1925, which makes it the longest-running radio programme in the country. It is not a concert: it is a variety show in segments with adverts read out live between them, seven or eight acts a night, some legends and some not yet. Set into the middle of the stage is a circle of dark oak cut out of the Ryman floor when the show moved out here in 1974, so that every performer still stands on it.

  1. 10:00

    Tennessee State Capitol

    Architecture

    Free guided tours run on weekdays and are booked through the state museum. Forty minutes, and worth it for the story of the architect who fought with everybody and was interred in the north wall.

  2. 11:30

    Tennessee State Museum

    Historic

    Free, no ticket, and much better than expected. The Civil War and the country music sections are the strong ones. Ninety minutes.

  3. 13:30

    Hot chicken, if you are brave

    Eat

    Cayenne paste under the skin and on it, served on white bread with pickles. Order mild the first time and mean it. Every local has a different favourite counter and all of them are right.

  4. 15:00

    Parthenon

    Culture

    The only complete copy of the building anywhere, at full size, with an art museum in the basement. Closed on Mondays outside summer. The park around it is free and the building is worth seeing from the outside alone.

  5. 19:00

    Grand Ole Opry

    Other

    Shows run Friday and Saturday all year and more nights in season. Book ahead; the cheap seats in the upper balcony are perfectly good. Backstage tours run in the daytime and are separate.

With more time: The hotel complex next to the Opry House is worth walking into even if you are not staying: nine acres of indoor gardens under glass with a river running through them, which is exactly as odd as it sounds.

Day 3 in Nashville

Andrew Jackson's plantation, on the way to the airport

The Hermitage is fifteen miles east of the city and about ten minutes off the road to the airport, which makes it the obvious last morning.

It was Andrew Jackson's plantation and it is one of the best preserved early presidential homes in the country: the 1830s mansion is furnished with the family's own possessions, the original wallpaper is still on the hall walls, and Jackson and his wife are buried in the garden.

It is also, and the site now says so directly, a plantation worked by enslaved people, around 150 of them at Jackson's death. The archaeology of the slave quarters is part of the visit and there is a separate audio tour about the people who lived in them, which is the more interesting half of the morning and was not on offer here twenty years ago.

Allow the best part of three hours including the grounds, then twenty minutes to the airport.

  1. 09:30

    The Hermitage

    Culture

    Buy the ticket that includes the mansion tour and both audio tours. Wagon rides across the fields run in season. Two and a half hours; the grounds take longer than people expect.

  2. 12:30

    A meat and three

    Eat

    One meat, three vegetables, cornbread, and iced tea that is sweet whether you asked or not. This is the everyday food of the region and the cafeterias that serve it are cheap and full at noon.

With more time: With a later flight, the botanical garden and art museum on a 55-acre estate southwest of the city is the alternative, built by the family who made Maxwell House coffee and open for the sculpture trail as much as the house.

Before you go

Getting in

Nashville International is about eight miles east of downtown and has grown enormously in the last decade. There is a bus into town and a taxi takes twenty minutes when the interstate is behaving.

There is no useful passenger rail here. Nashville is a driving city and most people arrive by air or on the interstate from Memphis, Atlanta or Louisville.

Getting around

Downtown is walkable and the whole of the first day sits inside six blocks. Beyond that, a car or a taxi, because the bus network is thin and the distances are real.

Lower Broadway on a weekend evening is a phenomenon: pedal taverns, bachelorette parties in matching outfits, and traffic at walking pace. If that is not the trip you came for, go on a weeknight or drink somewhere else, of which there is plenty.

Hearing music without paying for it

The honky tonks on Broadway charge nothing at the door and the bands play for the tip bucket, so tip them. Three or four bars in a row, three floors each, a different band on every floor.

The listening rooms are the other half of it and the opposite in tone: small places where songwriters play their own material in the round and the audience is expected to be silent. The most famous of them is in a suburban shopping centre and takes reservations a week ahead at the minute they open.

When to come

April, May, September and October. July and August are hot and heavy in a way that makes walking downtown unpleasant by mid afternoon.

Two dates to plan around rather than into: the country music festival in early June fills every room in the city, and the marathon in late April closes the streets.

The thing that stays with people is not the Hall of Fame or the Opry, good as both are. It is walking past an open door on a weekday afternoon and hearing a band that would headline anywhere else playing to eleven people for tips.

Carry cash, and put some of it in the bucket.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Is three days enough for Nashville?
Yes. Two would do the museums and Broadway; the third buys you the Opry and a morning out of town, and both are worth having. Nashville is also an easy pairing with Memphis, three hours west, if you have a week.
Opry House or the Ryman?
Both work and they are the same show in different rooms. The Ryman has the better acoustics and the more famous history, and the Opry goes back into it for a run of weeks each winter. The Opry House out by the river is where the broadcast happens the rest of the year, with the piece of the old stage set into its floor. Check which venue your date is at before you book.
Do I need a car?
Not for the first day, which is entirely walkable, and yes for the other two unless you are happy paying for taxis. The Opry, the Parthenon and the Hermitage are all a drive apart.
Is Broadway worth going to?
For an evening, absolutely, and the musicianship is genuinely high. What puts people off is the weekend party atmosphere rather than the music. Go on a Tuesday and it is a row of bars with excellent bands in them and room to stand.
What is hot chicken?
Fried chicken with cayenne paste worked under and over the skin, served on white bread with pickles on top. It was invented in Nashville, the story goes as a domestic revenge that backfired, and the heat scale at the well-known places goes far past what any visitor should attempt on a first try.
When should I avoid?
The country music festival in early June, unless that is why you are coming, when rooms triple in price. July and August are uncomfortably hot for a city where a lot of the pleasure is walking between bars.