Nashville

Belle Meade Plantation, known as 'the queen of Tennessee plantations', is home to an 1853 Greek revival mansion that has been carefully restored to show its original elegance.The plantation was founded in 1807 by John Harding, who brought thoroughbred horses for racing and breeding to Tennessee from the commonwealth of Virginia. Despite a horse racing hiatus during the Civil War, the Belle Meade Plantation developed under Harding and in 1867 he held the first sale of horses bred on his farm.Visitors to the plantation today can view the authentic Civil War bullet holes that riddle the old mansion's pillars. Among the outbuildings that survive on the 12-hectare (30-acre) site is one of the oldest houses in Tennessee, a log cabin built in 1790. There is also a carriage house, visitor centre, tearoom, and gift shop. Tours of the antebellum furnished mansion and grounds are given by guides dressed in period costume.

Address : 5025 Harding Pike

E-mail : [email protected]

Website : www.bellemeadeplantation.com

Telephone : +1 615 356 0501

Opening times : Daily 9am-5pm

Admission : Mansion tours: $24 adult, free for children

The fourth largest city in Tennessee, Chattanooga lies at the junction of four interstate highways, is easily accessible and well worth a visit. The city has brought about a renaissance in recent years, redeveloping its riverfront and downtown area to offer an extensive greenway system and river walk that takes strollers through the historic art district and several beautiful parks.Main attractions in the city are the Tennessee Aquarium, Civil War battlefields, the African American Museum, and a Creative Discovery Museum, as well as the renowned Jack Daniels distillery. Some visitors may know the Chattanooga Choo Choo song. The Chattanooga Choo Choo Hotel, named after the song, provides the opportunity to sleep in historically decorated train cars and to look at models of trains and trolleys used in Chattanooga over the years.However, the main destination for visitors to Chattanooga is Lookout Mountain, offering its historic Incline Railway, the steepest passenger railway in the world that offers panoramic views of the city and the Great Smoky Mountains 100 miles (161km) away. Lookout Mountain is also home to The Battles for Chattanooga Museum, Ruby Falls (a waterfall that plunges 145ft (44m) inside the mountain), and Rick City Gardens, from where it is possible to view seven states on a clear day. There are zipline tours available from Ruby Falls, an adventurous way to take in both the falls and the beautiful mountains.

Website : www.chattanoogafun.com

Situated at the central hub of Nashville in the Downtown entertainment district, is one of the world's largest museums and research centre for American music, the Country Music Hall of Fame.The main permanent exhibit, 'Sing Me Back Home', is a journey through the history of country music, drawing on the museum's rich collection of historical costumes, memorabilia, instruments, photographs, and manuscripts. In addition to the main exhibit, temporary exhibits focus on individual Hall of Fame Inductees, and the Archive Spotlight Series highlights specific themes from the main exhibition. Live performances, interactive exhibits, and lots of great music supplement these artefacts.The museum is home to vast collections of moving images, recorded sound, and photographs, portraying country music as well as the development of recordings, filming, and photography. Among the exhibits are Elvis Presley's gold-leaf covered Cadillac, Emmy Lou Harris' jewelled cowboy boots, and Bob Dylan's autographed lyric sheets.Live music is played in the atrium and digital film presentations are offered in the theatre. Visitors can also watch museum archivists and restoration experts at work, and study a vast wall displaying chart-topping gold and platinum country records.

Address : 222 Fifth Avenue South

E-mail : [email protected]

Website : www.countrymusichalloffame.org

Telephone : (615) 416 2001

Opening times : Daily 9am-5pm.

Admission : General admission: $26 adults, $16 youth, free for children, other concessions available.

No visit to Nashville is complete without attending a show at the Grand Ole Opry, which has been going strong on the airwaves since 1925. The home of the world-famous country music show, the Grand Ole Opry, is now in Opryland Drive in a vast 4,400 seat auditorium which is part of the Opryland resort complex north of Nashville's city centre. From here the world's longest running radio show is still broadcast on the Nashville station WSM (650 on the AM dial), featuring new stars and legends of country and bluegrass music performing live on stage.From February to October, the shows are hosted by the new Grand Ole Opry House while the winter run from November to January is hosted by the Opry's former permanent home, the Ryman Auditorium. The Ryman Auditorium housed the Grand Ole Opry shows from 1943 until 1974, when the Grand Ole Opry House was built with a much larger capacity.

Address : 2802 Opryland Drive, Opry Plaza

Website : www.opry.com

East of Nashville on the border between Tennessee and North Carolina lies the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Covering more than one and a half million acres, the park is the largest in the eastern United States, and America's most visited park. The park is a designated International Biosphere Reserve and a World Heritage Site, drawing millions of visitors every year to enjoy the panoramic views, tumbling mountain streams, uninterrupted forest, and historic buildings it encompasses.The main route to the park is via Knoxville, Pigeon Forge, and Gatlinburg, all worth a visit in their own right. Inside the park itself there are more than 270 miles (435km) of road through the ancient mountains, which are home to a variety of plant and animal life, many of the species unique to the area. The American Black Bear is the symbol of the Smokies and the park's most famous resident, while some more rare residents have been reintroduced into the area since the park's inception include the river otter, elk, and the Peregrine Falcon.The park offers numerous outdoor recreational pursuits and offers a glimpse into the lives of early southern Appalachian farming families, with 77 historic structures like log cabins, barns, churches, and gristmills. There is also a research library open by appointment that contains documents relating to the area's history.

Website : www.nps.gov/grsm

Telephone : +865 436 1200

Opening times : Primary roads are open 24 hours a day all year round.

The third-largest city in Tennessee, Knoxville, although not as illustrious as Memphis or Nashville, is well worth a visit. Serving as Tennessee's capital from its admission into the Union in 1796 until 1817, early reports of Knoxville described it as an 'alternately quiet and rowdy river town.'Modern-day visitors to Knoxville, just three hours east of Nashville on Interstate 40, have plenty of attractions to choose from. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is a stone's throw away, while downtown Knoxville is home to the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, and the historic Tennessee Theatre.Knoxville is also home to the University of Tennessee. If at all possible, buy a ticket to a UT Vols football game. Their fanatical, orange-clad supporters are a sight to behold on game-days, easily filling the 100,000-seat Neyland Stadium, and raising a cacophony that can be heard right around the city. The downtown area known as the Jackson Avenue Warehouse District, immortalised by Cormac McCarthy's sprawling novel Suttree, is full of soot-blackened buildings, jazz bars, and funky home-style restaurants.

Website : www.ci.knoxville.tn.us

The centrepiece of Nashville's Centennial Park is the world's only full-scale replica of the Parthenon temple in Athens, Greece, complete with a re-creation of the 42ft (13m) high statue of Athena that stood outside the temple in ancient Greece. Like the original, the Parthenon in Nashville faces east to let in light as the sun rises.The Parthenon was originally built for Tennessee's 1897 Centennial Exposition, its plaster decoration being direct casts of the Parthenon Marbles and original sculptures which adorned the pediments of the Greek Parthenon that was built in 438 BC. The massive bronze doors measuring 24 feet high and 7 feet across come in two sets of two, making them the largest set of matching doors in the world. The building today serves as Nashville's art museum, with a permanent collection of 63 paintings donated by James M. Cowan that highlights 19th and 20th century American artists. 57 artists are represented by the collection, and all of the paintings are oil on canvas. Many of the paintings are Impressionist in style. A variety of temporary shows and exhibitions are also presented, and lectures covering a wide variety of topics related to the arts are hosted at the museum on a regular basis.

Address : Centennial Park, 2500 West End Ave

E-mail : [email protected]

Website : www.parthenon.org

Telephone : (615) 862 8431

This National Historic Landmark in downtown Nashville, nicknamed the Mother Church of Country Music, is regarded as the founding home of country music, having been the performance venue for the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974.The theatre was originally built in 1892 by Thomas G. Ryman as a gospel tabernacle after his sudden conversion to Christianity. The building served as an evangelical meeting hall immediately after being erected, with regular performances by gospel singers and choirs becoming more and more common with the passing years. Eventually musical performances became the building's main focus, and a stage was built for the Grand Ole Opry's broadcasts. Such great names as Sarah Bernhardt, Patsy Cline, and Elvis Presley trod the boards here in their time.Today the Grand Ole Opry has moved on to a new theatre, but the Ryman Auditorium has been restored and is still a popular performance venue where concerts are held regularly. By day the theatre acts as a museum, which visually portrays the stories of its rich history with a series of displays and exhibits highlighting the building's history as well as all the great names that have performed there over the years.

Address : 116 Fifth Avenue North

Website : www.ryman.com

Telephone : (615) 889 3060

Opening times : Daily 9am-4pm

The Tennessee State Museum is one of the largest of its kind in America with a huge array of permanent exhibits telling the story of Tennessee, starting out 15,000 years ago in prehistoric times and culminating in the early 20th century. The museum was originally founded in 1817 by a portrait artist in order to display paintings. However, the collections grew into much more than that, and in 1937 the General Assembly combined the original museum collection with artefacts from World War I and other state museum collections into one museum, housed on the lower level of the War Memorial Building.In 1981, the Tennessee State Museum moved to the James K. Polk Center, where it now occupies three floors, approximately 60,000 square feet of exhibits. Much of the museum is focused on history and is displayed in the form of permanent exhibits, while changing exhibits often display the works of local and other artists.Prominent historic figures are highlighted, like former US President Andrew Jackson, Daniel Boone, and legendary frontiersman Davy Crockett. Exhibits include displays of furniture, silverware, weapons, uniforms, battle flags, quilts, and artworks from the civil war period. The museum also features reproductions of a 19th-century gristmill, and 18th-century print shop, a frontier cabin, antebellum parlour, and a Victorian painting gallery.

Address : 505 Deaderick Street

E-mail : [email protected]

Website : www.tnmuseum.org

Telephone : (615) 741 2692

Opening times : Tuesday - Saturday 10am-5pm, Sunday 1pm-5pm, closed Monday.