Nashville, Tennessee Museums

Nashville was founded in 1779 and is the capital of Tennessee. The city was strategically located as a port on the Cumberland River and, in the 19th century, became a railroad center.

Nashville, as part of Tennessee, seceded during the American Civil War and was the first state capital in the Confederacy to fall to Union troops.

Today, Nashville is a major center for the music industry, especially country music; Nashville is commonly known as “Music City.” Nashville is also a major center for healthcare, publishing, banking, and automotive industries.

It is also home to numerous colleges and universities and is referred to as “Athens of the South” due to its large number of educational institutions.

Nashville has a vibrant arts, historical and cultural tradition with many arts centers, specialist museums, university museums, plus a full-scale replica of the Ancient Greek Parthenon.

Replica of the Ancient Greek Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee

Virtual Tour of the Museums in Nashville, Tennessee

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum
Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum
Tennessee State Museum
The Parthenon

Inside the replica of the Ancient Greek Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee

Highlights Tour of the Museums in Nashville, Tennessee

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is one of the world’s largest museums dedicated to preserving country music artifacts and the interpretation of American popular country music.

The Country Music Association and the state of Tennessee chartered the Country Music Foundation in 1964 to collect, preserve, and publicize information and artifacts relating to the history of country music.

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum opened in 1967, and the collection began to expand with recordings, books, periodicals, sheet music, songbooks, photographs, business documents, and other materials.

Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum

The Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum honors musicians of all genres and instruments. Inductees are nominated by members of the American Federation of Musicians and by music industry professionals.

The museum opened in 2006 with a collection of instruments owned and played by well-known artists and behind-the-scenes session musicians.

These musicians that you may have heard but may have never seen were often the heroes behind the hits of many great artists who recorded the many music hits.

The Musicians Hall of Fame museum honors talented musicians who played on the most significant hit recordings.

Tennessee State Museum

The Tennessee State Museum chronicles Tennessee’s history by guiding visitors through the museum’s collection using exhibition galleries, a digital learning center, and a Grand Hall.

The mission of the Museum is to procure, preserve, exhibit, and interpret objects which relate to the social, political, economic, and cultural history of Tennessee and Tennesseans.

The museum’s exhibitions include historical artifacts and displays of art, silver, weapons, furniture, textiles, and photographs. The Museum’s Civil War holdings consist of uniforms, battle flags, and weapons.

The State Museum, which first opened in 1937, gained a new larger facility in 2018, capable of hosting large reproductions of a historic print shop, a painting gallery, a grist mill, and much more.

The Parthenon

The Parthenon in Centennial Park, in Nashville, Tennessee, is a full-scale replica of the original Athens Parthenon, which dates back to 440 BC. The Nashville Parthenon functions as an art museum with a re-creation of the Athena Parthenos statue in the main hall.

Unlike the original Parthenon in Greece, which has been severely damaged by 2,000 years of vandalism and theft, the replica of the Nashville Parthenon is complete in the historic temple’s original state. Its decorations are colored as close to the presumed original as possible.

The plaster replicas of the Parthenon Marbles that are displayed in the Nashville Parthenon are direct casts of the original sculptures which adorned the pediments of the Athenian Parthenon.

Museums in Nashville, Tennessee

City: Nashville
State: Tennessee
Country: United States
Founded: 1779
Incorporated: 1806
Named for: Francis Nash
Population: 2 million
Nickname(s): Music City, Country Music Capital, Athens of the South

Museums in Nashville, Tennessee – Map

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum – 360 Virtual Views

The Parthenon – 360 Virtual Views

Museums in Nashville, Tennessee

New York Museums – Virtual Tours

The Metropolitan Museum of Art or MET
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Intrepid, Sea, Air & Space Museum
Neue Galerie New York
The Cloisters
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
American Museum of Natural History
Museum of the City of New York
New-York Historical Society
Frick Collection
Met Breuer
Rubin Museum of Art
Brooklyn Museum

Museums in Nashville, Tennessee

Washington, D.C. Museums – Virtual Tours

National Gallery of Art
National Museum of American History
National Air and Space Museum
National Museum of African American History and Culture
National Museum of Natural History
National Portrait Gallery
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Phillips Collection
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
International Spy Museum

Museums in Nashville, Tennessee

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“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.”
– Mark Twain

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Photo Credit: Official U.S. Navy Page from United States of AmericaMC2 Cody Hendrix/U.S. Navy / Public domain; Will Powell / CC BY-SA (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0); Cdv1014 / CC BY-SA (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

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