Nashville is the capital of country music and one of the most visited cities in the American South. The Broadway strip — blocks of honky-tonks, neon signs, and live music spilling out of every door — is the face the city shows to the world. But Nashville is also a college town (Vanderbilt, Belmont, Fisk), a major healthcare hub, and a city that has been reinventing itself for twenty years. East Nashville, once overlooked, is now dense with restaurants and independent businesses. The Gulch has become a polished, walkable neighbourhood of new hotels and good eating. The food scene, long rooted in Southern comfort food and the meat-and-three tradition, has broadened considerably.
The music is genuine. The Country Music Hall of Fame and the Ryman Auditorium are world-class institutions. Music Row still functions as the industry's nerve centre — the bungalows and publishing houses along 16th and 17th Avenues South are where careers are built and deals are made; RCA Studio B, where Elvis and Dolly Parton recorded, is open to the public via Hall of Fame tours. The Bluebird Cafe, a 90-seat listening room in Green Hills, is where Garth Brooks was discovered and where the songwriter-in-the-round format — performers taking turns, acoustic — is practiced most seriously. The Grand Ole Opry House ten miles north-east of downtown remains the institutional home of the show that built Nashville's reputation.
One surprise: Centennial Park contains a full-scale, full-colour replica of the Parthenon, complete with a 42-foot gold Athena inside. It was built for Tennessee's centennial exposition in 1897. Nashville's nickname "Athens of the South" predates the replica, but the building makes the point visually.
Hot chicken — bone-in fried chicken coated in a paste of cayenne and spices — is the food Nashville is most proud of. Prince's Hot Chicken Shack is the originator; the heat levels run from mild to Extra Hot, which is not a bluff.