Is Downtown a good place to stay in Nashville?

Downtown is the most convenient place to stay in Nashville for a first visit. Lower Broadway's honky-tonks, the Ryman Auditorium, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Johnny Cash Museum are all within a few minutes' walk, and Bridgestone Arena and the Music City Center are on the same blocks. The pedestrian bridge crosses the river to Nissan Stadium and East Nashville.

The area is built around live music. Lower Broadway is a strip of neon-lit bars where bands play from late morning until the early hours, Printers Alley has older bars and blues clubs, and SoBro, south of Broadway, has newer hotels and restaurants around the convention centre. Hot chicken, barbecue and rooftop bars are never far away.

The downside is the noise and the crowds. Broadway is packed at weekends, often with bachelorette parties and party buses, and the music carries late into the night. Downtown hotels are expensive, especially on Fridays and Saturdays, and parking adds a lot to the bill.

What makes downtown special is that the music is everywhere. You can walk into a bar at noon and hear a band, catch a show at the Ryman in the evening and still find live music on Broadway after midnight. For a first trip to Music City, there's nowhere more exciting to wake up.