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Nashville

City in Tennessee, United StatesNashville sits on the Cumberland River in Middle Tennessee, a little west of the centre of this long, narrow state.

What it's known for

Nashville is the capital of Tennessee and the heart of country music. A radio announcer first called it 'Music City, U.S.A.' on air in 1950, and its many universities and colleges also earned it the nickname 'Athens of the South'.

Fun facts

  1. The city began in 1779 as Fort Nashborough, named in honour of Francis Nash, a hero of the American Revolutionary War.
  2. The Grand Ole Opry, a country music show founded in 1925, is the longest-running radio broadcast in US history.
  3. A full-scale copy of the Parthenon of Athens stands in Centennial Park; it was built for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in 1897.

Finding it on the globe

Picture Tennessee as a long strip with Kentucky above it. Nashville is a little west of the middle, and closer to the Kentucky border than to the southern edge.

Easy to mix up

Memphis, the other famous music city in Tennessee, is far to the west on the Mississippi River. Nashville, the capital, is in the middle of the state.

Sources: Wikipedia: Nashville, Tennessee, Wikipedia: Grand Ole Opry, Wikipedia: Parthenon (Nashville), Wikipedia: Tennessee, Wikipedia: Memphis, Tennessee