Start your tour at the Mecca of country music, the Ryman Auditorium, at 116 Fifth Avenue N. Built as a church, from 1943 to 1974, this was the site of the weekly broadcasts of the Grand Old Opry radio show. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Johnny Cash filmed his variety show here. The list of great performers, be they country, rock, classical, bluegrass, jazz or alternative musicians or actors and actresses, is astonishingly impressive.
Visit the current home of the Grand Old Opry at 2802 Opryland Drive. Here you'll find an Opry Museum, a shop, the main Grand Old Opry House and the smaller Acuff Theatre. Attend a performance on Tuesday, Friday, or Saturday night or take a backstage tour.
Pass quickly through Music Row, which is bound by Division Street to the north, Grand Avenue to the south, Sixteenth Avenue North to the east and Seventeenth Avenue North to the west. This is the center of the country music industry, though there's not much here besides office buildings and music studios.
Pay homage to the greats of country music at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum at 222 Fifth Avenue South. This state-of-the-art facility includes a rotunda with plaques of the Hall's inductees, as well as permanent and temporary exhibitions of memorabilia, photos, costumes, sheet music and anything else you could imagine pertaining to country music and its allied genres.
Stock up on your favorite country CDs, DVDs, books and photos at the Ernest Tubb Record Shops at 417 Broadway and 2416 Music Valley Drive, Suite 110. The Music Valley location displays singer Ernest Tubb's former tour bus, and the Texas Troubadour Theatre, a venue used for free Saturday night radio broadcasts, a Sunday cowboy church and the twice-weekly performance of an Elvis impersonator.
Explore the antebellum South at one of Nashville's plantations. The Hermitage at 4580 Rachel's Lane was the home of Andrew Jackson. The property includes the main house, a visitor's center, outbuildings, cabins, slave quarters and Jackson's tomb out in the garden. Belle Meade Plantation at 5025 Harding Pike was used as a top horse-raising facility by several generations of the Harding family. There is the usual grouping of stables and outbuildings, as well as the elegantly-furnished Greek Revival mansion. Check out the mirror-image guest rooms on the second floor.
Indulge your interest in ancient Greek culture at the Parthenon at 2600 West End Avenue. Constructed in 1897 and rebuilt in the 1930s, the Nashville Parthenon is a replica of the Athenian Parthenon as it looked upon completion in the fifth century B.C. The main level is fitted out as a temple to Athena, while the ground floor serves as an art gallery.
