The world capital of country music — where the Ryman Auditorium launched more careers than any other stage, Broadway's neon strip runs live music 24/7/365, and a city of songwriters kept reinventing American popular music for a century
Nashville (680,000; metro 2.1 million) is the global centre of the country music industry and the home of Music Row — the concentration of recording studios, publishing houses, and labels that produced virtually every major country recording of the 20th century. Lower Broadway, four blocks of neon-lit honky-tonks between 1st and 5th Avenues, is the only street in America where live music plays from 10am to 3am every single day of the year, free of charge — venues like Tootsie's Orchid Lounge (est. 1960) and Robert's Western World have launched careers (Kris Kristofferson, Waylon Jennings) and…
Nashville was founded in 1779 as Fort Nashborough by James Robertson and John Donelson, becoming the permanent state capital of Tennessee in 1843. The city's music history began with the Grand Ole Opry radio programme (first broadcast 5 October 1925, WSM 650 AM), which ran continuously for 99 years and created the national audience that turned Nashville into the country music industry capital. The Ryman Auditorium (1892), built as the Union Gospel Tabernacle by riverboat captain Thomas Ryman, hosted the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974 and remains the most storied stage in American music — pe…