From cutting your own record at the Ryman Auditorium to cutting a rug at Nashville’s most happenin’ honky-tonks, look no further for Music City fun…

If you’re looking for fun things to do in Nashville guaranteed to make your visit one for the record books, you’re in luck. Music City has it all. To help you get as much as possible out of your visit, we’ve compiled an exhaustive list of some the city’s most popular must-see and must-do activities. From cutting your own record at the Ryman Auditorium to cutting a rug at Nashville’s most happenin’ honky-tonks, look no further. This is your comprehensive guide to the best Nashville attractions. 

That’s right. In this post, we provide you with insider tips on getting the most from your visit to Nashville. We tell you what’s going on where, and when, with the city’s 21 best arts venues, historic sites, pro sports arenas, and more, plus eateries large and small. You’ll learn where to bring the kids, and where to bring just you and your scootin’ boots to dance it up in Music City USA.  

Work or play, family or friends, not matter what brings you to Nashville, Stay Alfred’s several downtown travel apartment properties are sure to enhance your trip. Central locations near the major Nashville attractions, plus spacious floor plans and awesome amenities help you make the most of your travels. 

You’ll live like a local and come to love your Stay Alfred travel apartment – your place in Music City. Our upscale travel apartments blow away typical downtown Nashville hotels, offering full-size kitchens, conveniences like fast, free WiFi and in-unit laundry, and private bedrooms, so there’s no more rehashing your day at the foot of your hotel bed.

And, you’ll definitely have time to do that with these 21 Nashville attractions so close! So, without further ado: hold onto your hat, and here they are! 

Music City USA’s Best Live Music Venues Large and Small

If you’re not in Nashville specifically for the music alone, whatever it is you’re here for, you’ll quickly forget after Music City gets ahold of your ears. You know this. Those affected likely call it “getting Nashvilled” or something close. And, it’d be a Nash-ville-ification of this Tennessee town and of you, dear traveler, to not hit at least one of these venues. 

Whether it’s legendary local, Margo Price, strumming “A Little Pain” at the historic Ryman Auditorium, aka the Mother Church of Country Music and home of the Grand Ole Opry radio show that helped nickname Nashville “Music City USA” or maybe Sheryl Crow in the Bluebird Café listening room, sharing her song inspirations with you in one of the space’s 90 seats, there’s something phenomenal going on every night! No matter what you opt for, it’s inevitable that you’re missing out on something else just as amazing. Go ahead and rebook your Stay Alfred travel apartment now.

How ‘bout that Ryman? Ranked Rolling Stone’s top 10 best music venues in the country, the Ryman Auditorium has hosted big-name entertainers like Harry Houdini, Charlie Chaplin, Doris Day, Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline for over a century. When the Grand Ole Opry country music radio show began to air from the auditorium in 1943, the Ryman saw the biggest names in country music every week, and worldwide broadcasting made Nashville the capital of the country music map. Today, performers from Sarah McLaughlin to Little Feat to Tesla take the stage every night at the Ryman, so be sure to catch a show here. The Ryman is also a great place to learn about Nashville’s music heritage, offering cool, self-guided tours with recorded histories of performers and performances. And, included with your tour, Ryman sound engineers will record you (or the kiddos) singing your faves, and send you off with a CD to listen to back at your Stay Alfred travel apartment. 

Here’s a great local venue a stone’s throw from the Ryman. Voted as Nashville’s favorite honky-tonk bar for eight years in a row, Robert’s Western World touts traditional country music and shows nightly (and daily) along with great beer and food and all the two-steppin’ you can muster. The house band, Brazilbilly, lead by Robert’s proprietor, will get your boots to scootin’ to traditional country and old-time dance music. No wallflowers allowed! Robert’s laid back atmosphere influences the menu, which offers a Recession Special fried bologna sandwich with chips and a PBR on the cheap.

Whether you’re a bluegrass fan or not, the Station Inn is a must-see when visiting Nashville. Founded by six local bluegrass pickers in 1974, the Station Inn offers world-class bluegrass, blues, roots and Americana in a classic and intimate venue considered one of the best in Music City. Greats like Bill Monroe, JT Gray and Alan Jackson have played at Station Inn. And The Station Inn still delivers, with nightly shows to enjoy. Up for an epic jam session? Catch the Station Inn’s bluegrass jams every Sunday evening! 

Curious about the heros behind the hits? The Bluebird Cafe  features in-the-round acoustic music performed by its composers. A standard nightly performance at the 90-seat Bluebird Cafe, Nashville’s itty bitty world-class listening room, often features three or four songwriters seated in the center of the room, leading their own songs or accompanying others’. Artists such as LeAnn Rimes, John Prine, Jojo Herman (Widespread Panic) and Phil Vassar have graced the Bluebird Cafe soundwaves, with many famous folks getting found and landing record deals here. It’s your chance to say “I met her before she was famous,” and a Music City experience you won’t forget.

For major events in Music City, the Bridgestone Arena is Nashville’s biggest venue, seating 20,000 and commonly featuring performers like Adele, Rhianna, Mumford and Sons, Madonna, and more. The arena is the fifth most popular venue in the US, hosting many international events, the CMT Music Awards, and more! Psst, sports fans:. It’s also home to Nashville’s Predators hockey team, and a frequent venue for NCAA sports events, and appears again in our sports section below.

From Art Museums to Historic Neighborhoods, Nashville’s Got a Story to Tell

If you haven’t timed your travels to hit a Nashville art walk, crawl, or stumble, (all highly recommended), here are some of Music City’s greatest art and history hits that don’t involve music. Well, live music anyway. From the little Johnny Cash Museum and the expansive Country Music Hall of Fame, Nashville has a song to sing and a story to tell. But Nashville’s best goes beyond just music heritage, with sites like the Frist Center for Visual Arts showcasing local and international talent, and The Parthenon, the city’s own full-scale replica of the original Greek Parthenon and a big venue for educational and musical events that tie right in with Nashville’s “Athens of the South” nickname.  

Nashville’s Frist Center for the Visual Arts features rotating exhibitions from all around the globe, including greats like Van Gogh, Monet, Degas and more. An interactive ArtQuest gallery with hands-on drawing, painting and printmaking stations is sure to inspire kids and adults alike. And, a whopping 24,000 square feet of gallery space boasting local and national artists as well, with exhibitions of anything from sculpture to photography to ancient art, makes the Frist a must-see in Nashville. Got kids? Special family-day deals get all the kids in for the price of one accompanying adult, with plenty of hands-on activities and tours kids will love.

Tennessee isn’t the first place you’d go to peruse Greek architecture, but somehow Nashville pulls it off, in replica anyway, with the full-scale copy of Athens’ Parthenon. Yup, the whole thing, complete with stylobates, fluted columns, and the carved tympanum, and with the 42-foot statue of Athena as the focal point, just like in Greece. Located in Centennial Park, the installation was part of Nashville’s 1897 Centennial Exposition, the city having earned the nickname Athens of the South thanks to its higher institutions of higher education and its being the first city in the South to implement public education. Along with a park to relax and play in the shadow of “Greek” architecture, the Parthenon itself houses 63 American paintings, and is the venue for Musicians Corner performances and kids’ educational events. Centennial Park also hosts lots of great festivals, farmers markets, and outdoor plays.

Another must-see spot is Nashville’s oldest neighborhood, Germantown. It’s a great place to get back down to Earth after the Parthenon, and it’s loaded with an interesting mix of hip restaurants holding court in revived Victorian buildings, funky boutiques in remodeled warehouses, and yummy streetside cafes. It’s also home to the Nashville Farmers Market (a great spot to pick up groceries for that Stay Alfred kitchen). Take the Local Tastes of Nashville Tour to get the inside scoop on this very Nashville neighborhood while enjoying samples from Music City’s best restaurants.  

Nashville’s music heritage is so rich, even the business end of its powerful country music past is worth catching. And Music Row is the place for that. This lively historic district cropped up in the early 1950s and is still the heart of Nashville’s country music industry. Music Row, located on 16^th and 17^th Avenues South, is home to a slew of major recording studios, publishing houses, video production firms, and radio stations, many of which offer great tours. One of the best tours is of RCA’s Studio B, a property of the Country Music Hall of Fame and the space where some of country music’s biggest artists cut their first records under the guidance of studio executive, Chet Atkins, a Country Music Hall of Famer and key player in developing the sound that put Nashville on the country music map. Take the tour and learn about Atkins and many other hall of famers. Other sites include Columbia’s Historic Quonset Hut, the earliest studio on Music Row, Owen Bradley Park, and “Musica,” a large bronze statue and centerpiece of the Music Row Roundabout. Hungry? Music Row’s upscale eateries boast some of the finest food in Nashville. 

You may have heard of this one. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is one of the biggest and most sophisticated museums and research centers devoted to the study and preservation of American music in the world. Founded in 1964, the museum touts one of the planet’s most expansive music archives and showcases cool artifacts from Bill Monroe’s mandolin to Elvis’s Cadillac limo with 24-karat gold plate trim. Plus, you’ll hear historic recordings of hundreds of Hall of Fame inductees, from Alabama to Jim Ed Brown and the Browns, from Gene Autry to Johnny Cash. Friendly tours are available and are geared toward both country fans and those unfamiliar with country music. Pro tip: Spend a couple hours immersing yourself in the CMHF museum’s rich musical history, then sashay on over to one of Nashville’s liveliest honkytonks a block away. Toss back a PBR and you’ll feel like longtime local.

Not quite or not even a country music fan? The Man in Black’s transcendence of the genre will likely strike a chord in you, bringing out the love, like a burning thing. That often happens at Nashville’s Johnny Cash Museum. The museum houses the largest collection of Cash memorabilia and artifacts. You’ll get a chance to listen to historic recordings of Johnny, plus see exhibits like guitars, costumes, and handwritten lyrics. The museum also features a great little cafe, with award-winning coffee, breakfast and lunch sandwiches, plus pastries. Admission toe the museum is a little pricey, but you get so much Cash in return! 

Zoos, Waterparks, and Music Venues Galore. Nashville is for Kids! 

Traveling to Nashville with kids? Here are some kid-friendly sites and activities in Music City. From open air concerts to hands-on science fun, from a jungle gym at the zoo for your own lil’ ones to adventures at Nashville’s cutting-edge science center, there’s no shortage of fun things to do in Nashville with kids! Take your pick from the following awesome things to do with kids large and small in Music City!

It takes a village to raise a child, and a bored child can raze a village. If you’re in Nashville Saturdays in May and June, or Thursdays in September, and kiddo is singing the cramped-traveler blues, there’s no better way to cheer her up than Kidsville at the Parthenon in Nashville’s downtown Centennial Park. Kidsville is a free weekly music-education program mostly coinciding with Nashville’s Musicians Corner program (a free all-ages concert series with all sorts of music). Free for families of children ages 12 and under, Kidsville offers fun educational activities, arts and crafts, kid-focused musicians, storytelling, and more! The Kidsville program also offers over 100 educational activities each year in the park and across Nashville. 

Got some little ones curious about animals? Had enough music? How about a visit to the Nashville Zoo? Music City’s zoo features 200 acres of fun and frolic and an emphasis on hands-on interactive learning activities for kids. Kiddos will love swinging like tree snakes at the zoo’s jungle gym, and running down curving paths amidst the trees is a great way to burn that extra travel energy. The zoo offers heaps of fascinating educational programs, with several rotating each week. Regular residents of the Nashville Zoo, from alligators to zebras, include 375 animal species and 2,675 individual animals!   

Got a little science buff who also likes adventure? There’s nothing better than Nashville’s Adventure Science Center for your little ones. The center boasts 44,000 square feet of science exhibits, with about 175 hands-on or otherwise interactive activities. Budding physicists and biologists will love learn-by-doing activities involving visual perception, space, air, energy and earth sciences. A cutting-edge planetarium will send kiddo to the moon. There’s an Imagination Playground that’s especially fun for tots. A beekeeping exhibit will generate a lot of buzz. And, the Adventure Science Center’s Nano exhibit is no small matter, or, wait… it is all about small matter, and also touts activities where kids large and small (not just small) can learn about nano phenomena.

Here are a few more fun things to do in Nashville with kids:  The Nashville Children’s Theatre is ranked in the top five kids’ theatres in the country by TIME magazine. NCT puts on some quality Sherlock Holmes and Charlie Brown plays and more. The theatre company also offers drama classes for kids, and is a great way for your little Romeo or Juliet to make friends on the road. Up for a splash? The Nashville Shores Waterpark, just ten minutes from downtown, is a great place to beat the Nashville heat. Got cooped up travel legs? The Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park offers fun activities like an annual kite-flying events and nature learning opportunities, and is just a great spot to stretch those little legs downtown.  

Titans, Predators, and Soccer Teams! Oh My! 

Take me out to the ball game…and the hockey game!  When it comes to sports, it’s game on in Music City. Nashville is home to the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, the NHL’s Predators, and a new Major League Soccer franchise coming to a planned stadium at the Nashville Fairgrounds in 2020. Score seats at Bridgestone Arena to take in a Predators hockey game.  Catch home Titan’s games at Nissan Stadium and scream your head off with about 70,000 other fans. Then hit your favorite Nashville pubs to continue the revelry there. It’s a great way to bond with the locals, and the stadiums and pubs are likely in walking distance from your smartly located Stay Alfred travel apartment!   

Hot Chicken Heaven, Southern Comfort Food, and More! It’s a Culinary Revolution in Nashville.

From cafes to food trucks, fiery hot chicken to surf and turf delights. Here’s where to get your eat on in Music City. Southern comfort food, gourmet hot chicken shacks, barbecue from the pits of, well, heaven, Nashville is a foodie’s fantasyland. Not that it needed one, but on top of already being slow-cooked in the South’s heritage of quality cuisine, Nashville has experienced a bit of a culinary revolution over the past decade. 

With farm-to-table restaurants making things fresher and tastier than ever, a burst of local competition for the best hot chicken in Music City, and that rivalry inspiring both the food and drinks in the city’s creative cocktail dens, it isn’t just the Grand Ole Opry that puts Nashville on the map these days. Here are some of the city’s greatest foodie hits. And they’re all easily accessible from your downtown Nashville Stay Alfred travel apartment.

Consider yourself warned. At Hattie B’s, you can order up hot chicken with a spice range from Mild to “Shut the Cluck Up!” And, Hattie B’s puts as much love into each dish as it does quality spices, so this place should definitely be on your hot-chicken bucket list when you’re in Nashville. And, if you’re not up for a monstrous case of mouth fire, you’re in cluck, Hattie’s also offers a tasty Southern-fried chicken option sans scream-worthy spice. As with everything at Hattie B’s, the baked beans are always done just right, and topping off your meal with a yummy peach cobbler dessert is highly recommended!   

Another great spot for spicy Nashville poultry is Prince’s Hot Chicken. Prince’s is one of Nashville’s original spicy chicken spots, serving “delicious and downhome” bird for almost a century, with Thorton Prince, “the father of Nashville’s hot chicken,” starting his recipe in the early 1900s. Today, Thorton Prince’s great niece, Ms. Andre Prince Jeffries, still brings the heat at Prince’s, staying ahead of the hot-chicken trend with Thorton’s original recipes, along with some of her own. Try it and see. And then put out the fire with Prince’s yummy Hummingbird Cake or a delicious slice of Prince’s famous pecan pie.

Had enough hot chicken? How about some cornmeal crusted catfish? Some shrimp and grits? Husk will treat you right. Voted one of Music City’s best restaurants and located in the heart of downtown Nashville, Husk holds onto heritage when it comes to Southern cuisine by insisting on regionally sourced ingredients only.  “If it doesn’t come from the South, it’s not coming through the door,” says Sean Brock, Husk’s Founding Chef. From Deviled Eggs with Pickled Okra and Trout Roe, to South Carolina Shrimp and Choppee Okra Stew, the Husk menu tantalizes taste buds. Good luck deciding!

Also in the heart of downtown Music City, The Southern features a shuck-to-order oyster bar and a real wood-fired grill that cooks locally-raised produce, meats, and sustainably harvested seafood to perfection. The menu boasts cuisine from the Gulf Coast to the Caribbean; from Nova Scotia to North Carolina, all cooked with Southern inspiration. From Banh Mi Tacos with pickled daikon to Smoked Baby Back Ribs with sweet potato fries, The Southern is sure to delight.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner, drinks, swimming, bowling, workspace, you name it, Nashville’s Pinewood Social is a great place to go any time of day. A vintage, upscale bowling alley lets you knock down some pins. There’s bocce ball fun for all. And, a cool swimming pool is a great way to cool down from the Nashville heat. Got work to do? The place also offers coworking space with conference length tables to share and couches for sprawling out with a good book. Breakfast means anything from Southern buttermilk biscuits to Smoked Salmon Cakes. There’s a brunch option all day. And, dinner brings on the Turkey and Brie, Lobster Roll and more. The bar offers everything from draft beers to craft cocktails and an extensive wine list.

Whether you’re up for an alfresco food truck lunch or are in need of fresh ingredients to make your favorite dinner back at your upscale Stay Alfred kitchen, the Nashville Farmers’ Market will hook you up proper. The year-round Farmers’ Market is loaded with retail space with fresh-farmed foods, local artisan wares for gifts to take back home from Music City, a 24,000 square-foot garden center, and an international food hall boasting dozens of restaurants from gourmet pizza to Jamaican cuisine. A great place to get to know Nashville, the market offers frequent chef-led cooking demonstrations and community workshops that are great for mixing with friendly locals!

Having trouble getting out of that cozy Stay Alfred bed? Here’s some tasty motivation. Start the day off right at one of these favorite Nashville cafes. While the dream-like comfort of your bed at Stay Alfred at The James might make you want to sleep in until noon, yummy breakfasts at Nashville cafes await. Whether it’s Nutella and banana-stuffed French toast pancakes at Sky Blue Café (Oh lawdy get outa bed!) or biscuits made with oh-so-much love, the brekkie chefs at Biscuit Love have no more amore for themselves, it’s time to rise and shine. C’mon, up and at ‘em, Stay Alfredians, nothing is too far.

Your Place in Music City. Where to stay in Nashville.

Is Music City is singing your song? Struck a chord? Have you beatin’ your feet toward Nashville? Or, maybe you’ve got a work trip slated for this awesome Southern city. Either way, there’s no ducking out of the incredible cultural experience Nashville offers. For sure though, you won’t want to cheapen the experience by coming home to a cramped hotel to rehash your day from the edge of your bed (or that silly chair in the corner). You’ll want the home-like living room of Stay Alfred on Church Street. You’ll want 24/7 customer service and professional housekeeping with the reliability of a hotel stay. You won’t want to roll the dice at a B&B with, ehem, offbeat guest services you’re scared to go back “home” to. 

No way. Not in Nashville. Music City calls for the quality experience you can only get from a Nashville Stay Alfred travel apartment, complete with full-kitchen, living room and professional guest services. That, and always located in walking distance to the best Nashville attractions. And great amenities. When you hit that show at the Ryman Auditorium, you want to stroll home to Stay Alfred at 505 and splash in that saltwater pool. You want stroll the riverside trail to that outdoor show at Ascend Amphitheatre, then get meander back to Stay Alfred on Rolling Mill Hill Street to watch the sunset from the sky lounge. 

Stay Alfred’s Nashville travel apartments let you live like a local – in style – and enjoy the security and space of your own place, complete with conveniences like a full kitchen, in-unit laundry, 24/7 Guest Services support and amenities that enhance your Music City experience. All that, and, unlike typical, overpriced hotel rooms, spacious floor plans with at least one private bedroom, an upscale bathroom, and a homelike living room to wind down in at the end of your Nashville day.

Call a Stay Alfred travel apartment your place in Nashville.