Nashville serves as the state capital for Tennessee and is America’s seventh-most highly populated state capital city.

Nicknames for Nashville include Music City, Country Music Capital, and Athens of the South the latter mostly because of its commitment to architecture and higher education. The Volunteer State is a popular moniker for Tennessee.

Nashville is America’s second-biggest music production center trailing only New York City. One of Nashville’s most popular tourist attractions is the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

Even greater than its legacy music sector, Nashville’s largest industry is health care via over 300 health care firms based in Nashville including Hospital Corporation of America–the biggest private operator of hospitals on the planet.

Another historic attraction in Nashville is President Andrew Jackson’s former home called The Hermitage, one of the largest and most visited U.S. presidential homes available for public viewing.

Research website numbeo ranks Nashville in the top 24% compared to the 250 cities evaluated on its overall quality of life index at June 2020. Nashville scored well on index factors such as property price to income ratio (lowest 12%), purchasing power (strongest 13%), pollution (cleanest 31%) and climate (best 45%). On the negative side, Nashville rates relatively poorly for cost of living (highest 28%), health care (worst 33%), traffic commute time (slowest 33%) and safety (bottom 35%).

Guinness World Records documents Nashville as being home to the world’s biggest singing lesson attracting 6,651 participants at Nashville’s Sommet Center on October 24, 2009. The musical event was organized by barbershop singers’ organization Sweet Adelines International.

From an international trade perspective, Tennessee exported U$31.1 billion worth of goods around the globe in 2019. Its most valuable exports include medical, dental or veterinarian instruments and appliances (8.5% of Tennessee’s global total), passenger motor vehicles (7.2%), civilian aircraft including parts (3.3%), uncarded cotton (2.2%), sterile sutures (1.8%), orthopedic or fracture appliances (1.5%), portable computers (1.3%), whiskies (1.3%), and artificial joints, parts or accessories (also 1.3%) according to United States Census Bureau data.

The non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Nashville was 12.1% at July 2020, up from 2.9% one year earlier.

Capital Facts for Nashville, United States: Quick Reference

 
Nashvillians celebrate Independence Day as a national holiday each July 4.

Nashville’s land area occupies 504.03 square miles (1,305.4 square kilometers). The state capital’s population was 673,167 Nashvillians at September 24, 2020.

At the state level, Tennessee’s land area covers 41,217 square miles (106,846 square kilometers) home to a population of 6.9 million people.

Nashville’s population density is more concentrated averaging 1,336 residents per square mile (516 per square kilometer).

Zooming out to Tennessee’s state boundaries, population density dilutes to an average 167 inhabitants per square mile (65 per square kilometer).