Running tour · nashville

Capitol to the Cumberland

1.5 mi run

Open in Stride Stories

The stories on this route

1. Tennessee State Capitol

   Look up at the hilltop: a Greek temple with columned porches on all four sides, and a slim round tower on top. That tower is patterned after a monument in ancient Athens, the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates.

2. Printers Alley

   Look for the big sign over the entrance, and the narrow brick alley behind it, lined with club doors, balconies and neon. The name is older than the neon. An 1866 deed calls this lane 'Black Horse or Printers Alley'.

3. Fort Nashborough

   Look out over the riverside park, toward the Cumberland on its high bank. Nobody knows exactly where the original Fort Nashborough stood. Nobody knows exactly where. It's thought to have been north of where the 1930 replica stood.

4. Ryman Auditorium

   Look at the red-brick hall with the tall pointed windows. On the front, a carved stone panel still reads 'Union Gospel Tabernacle'. That's what this was built as, between 1888 and 1892, for the evangelist Samuel Porter Jones.

5. Country Music Hall of Fame

   Look at the front of the building. That row of tall dark windows? They're meant to look like piano keys. Now follow the sweeping roofline to its sharp point. That suggests the tail fin of a 1950s Cadillac.

6. John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge

   Look along the long black steel bridge over the Cumberland, its humped spans on concrete piers. It was built between 1907 and 1909, by engineer Howard Jones, who was just 33 when he got the job.

Stories researched October 2026 · every fact checked against a source