Downtown
Nashville looks much like any other regional business center, dominated
by office blocks and parking lots, and dotted here and there with
major flagship structures like the gigantic Nashville Arena sports
and entertainment complex at Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and the Country
Music Hall of Fame at Fifth and Demonbreun streets. It's perfectly
possible to spend a busy day in Nashville without coming into contact
with country music. A good starting point is Riverfront Park at First
Street and Broadway, a thin stretch of grass and terracing dipping
down to the Cumberland River . A replica of the wooden Fort Nashborough
(Tues-Sun 9am-5pm) stands on a promontory above the river as
a monument to the city's founders of 1779. A few blocks away, the
worthy Tennessee State Museum at 505 Deaderick St (Tues-Sat 10am-5pm,
Sun 1-5pm; free) is strongest on the Civil War, highlighting the
hardships of the ill-clad, ill-fed soldiers, of whom 23,000 out of
77,000 died at Shiloh alone. Other displays in this huge space focus
on frontier life and on black Tennesseans, looking at slavery, Reconstruction,
the founding of the Ku Klux Klan and the civil rights movement. Hostels in Nashville
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ROOMS USA
