NASHVILLE · TENNESSEE
Steel guitars, neon, and Lower Broadway after dark.
Music City, top to bottom. Free live music in the honky-tonks, the Grand Ole Opry and the Ryman, Tennessee whiskey and hot chicken, haunted-history walks, and the day trips out to Lynchburg and Memphis.
Only in Music City
Three things you can only do in Nashville.
Live music, bar crawls and fried chicken turn up in every city. A hundred-year-old radio show, four blocks of free honky-tonks, and chicken hot enough to start a feud do not.
On the air since 1925
The Grand Ole Opry
The longest-running radio show on Earth, broadcast live every week for a hundred years. Stars step into a worn circle of oak cut from the old Ryman stage, where every name in country music has stood. Take the backstage tour by day, or come for the show and catch six acts you did not plan on loving.
- 1 Grand Ole Opry Show Admission Ticket
- 2 Grand Ole Opry House Guided Backstage Tour in Nashville
- 3 Nashville: Grand Ole Opry Show Ticket
Free music, every door
Honky-Tonk Highway
Four blocks of Lower Broadway, neon stacked three floors high, and a band playing in every bar from late morning until 3am. No cover charge anywhere. Walk in, order a cold one, tip the band in the bucket, and walk out when the next room sounds better. Nowhere else runs live music quite this loud, this cheap, this constant.
- 1 All-Inclusive Pub Crawl with Moonshine, Cocktails, and Craft Beer
- 2 Guided Pub Crawl Walking Tour of Downtown Nashville
- 3 Seeking Spirits Haunted Night-Time Pub Crawl in Nashville
Invented right here
Nashville Hot Chicken
Cayenne-lacquered fried chicken so hot it started as a scorned girlfriend's revenge at Prince's, and turned into the dish the whole city is known for. Eat it the proper way, on white bread with pickles to cut the burn, then chase the rest of the table down: meat-and-threes, biscuits, and Tennessee barbecue.
- 1 Nashville: Food Tour with 5+ Tastings of Local Delicacies
- 2 Walking Food & Drink Tour of Downtown Nashville
- 3 Delicious Donuts of Nashville: A Sweet City Walking Adventure
Where most people start
First time in town? Start with the whole city.
More visitors book this than anything else. A loop past downtown, Music Row and the landmarks, so you can see what you want to circle back to.
The classics
Nashville's Most Popular Tours & Tickets
Honky-tonk pub crawls, the Opry, ghost walks, whiskey trails and the city sightseeing loops. The ones most visitors book first.
Where to begin
The nights a Nashville trip is built around.
The Opry, the honky-tonks, a whiskey distillery, a ghost walk, a hot-chicken crawl and the downtown loop. The experiences most visitors plan a Music City weekend around, and the best of each.
The big question
Where to hear live music.
In Nashville the music finds you, so the only real question is where you want to be standing when it does. Three rooms define the city, and each one is a different night out.
Music City after dark
The ghosts behind the neon.
A city this old does not stay quiet after the bars empty. Lantern-led guides walk you through Printers Alley and the back streets with the true-crime stories the daytime tours skip: the murders, the duels, the spirits said to linger in the Ryman and the old downtown hotels. Some crawls hand you a drink with the history. All of them end the night somewhere darker than they started.
See the ghost and haunted walks →Tennessee whiskey
Mellowed through sugar-maple charcoal.
What makes it Tennessee whiskey, by law, is the slow drip through ten feet of charcoal before it ever sees a barrel. Taste it where it is made: the in-town distilleries like Nelson's Green Brier and Corsair right in Nashville, or a day run south to the rickyards at Jack Daniel's and George Dickel. Most tours pour generously, so let someone else drive.
See the whiskey and distillery tours →Music City
A whole city that runs on three chords.
More songs have been written in these few square miles than just about anywhere on Earth. The river bends past the honky-tonks, the skyline lights up over Broadway, and somewhere on every block a guitar case is open. See it from a trolley, a double-decker, an open-air golf cart or your own two feet.
Browse city tours and sightseeing →Where it was recorded
The rooms that made the sound.
A few blocks off Broadway, the hits were actually cut. Stand in RCA Studio B where Elvis recorded more than 200 songs and the Nashville Sound was invented, walk the rotunda of the Country Music Hall of Fame past Cash and Dolly and Hank, and stroll Music Row where the labels still work. This is the history the bar bands are playing toward.
- 1 Discover Nashville City Tour with Entry to Ryman & Country Music Hall of Fame
- 2 Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Admission
- 3 Nashville RCA Studio B & Country Music Hall of Fame Ticket Combo
Bachelorette capital of America
The party rolls right down Broadway.
Nashville did not ask to become the bachelorette capital, but it leaned in hard. Pedal taverns, open-air party tractors, hot tubs on wheels and double-decker party buses crawl the strip with the music up and a cooler aboard, half of them in matching sashes. Roll with your own group, or buy a seat on a public one and make new friends fast.
See all 14 party tours →Beyond Broadway
Six ways out of downtown.
Lynchburg for the whiskey. Memphis for Elvis and the blues. Franklin for the Civil War and the storybook square. Belle Meade for the mansion, the back roads for the waterfalls, and the Cumberland for a turn on the showboat.
By activity
Pick how to spend the day.
Walking tour if you want the stories. A golf cart or trolley if you want to cover ground. A helicopter for the skyline, a line-dancing lesson for the nerve, plus street-art rambles, e-bikes and downtown escape rooms.
Plan it
Three perfect days.
First time in Nashville? A long weekend that runs from the honky-tonks to the Opry to the back roads of Tennessee.
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