Nashville travel guide

It's impossible to spend any time in Nashville without getting your groove back: music made this city, music runs this city, music is this city.

A friendly Southern metropolis that beats to its own drum, line dances to its own fiddle and wigs out to its own steel guitar, Nashville has thrown up or welcomed in everyone from the Kings of Leon and Miley Cyrus to Little Richard and Johnny Cash.

Despite a reputation for country music, Nashville (or Nash Vegas as locals have taken to calling it) is far from rural. It’s a stylish cityscape with skyscrapers, architecturally attractive civic spaces, high-end hotels and on-trend dining options.

Located in the centre of Tennessee, with Memphis to the west and Chattanooga to the south, Nashville is the boom city of the southern states, attracting visitors from across the USA with its easy-going lifestyle, great BBQ and sweet treats like momma used to make.

Since becoming the state capital in 1843, Nashville has transformed itself from wild hunting outpost to the nation’s music heartlands. The Grand Ole Opry started its weekly radio broadcast here in 1925 and the city hasn’t looked back since.

It is now a cornerstone of country music. On any night of the week, the state-of-the-art music venues in Downtown Nashville attract devoted live music fans in their thousands. It doesn’t matter if it’s an international superstar stopping off on their stadium tour, or an unknown songwriter trying their luck in the dark bars of Honky Tonk Alley, Nashville lives up to its nickname as the Music City.

These days, it’s got more strings to its banjo than just the music though. Its restaurants are first class, its art scene is blossoming and it even has a replica of Greece’s Parthenon as an art museum.

So what are you waiting for? Let the unofficial mayor and mayoress of Nashville, Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton, sweep you off your feet for a feet-stompin', hand-clappin', bottom-wigglin' adventure of a lifetime.