50 free Nashville trivia questions with answers. Nashville is more than honky-tonks on Broadway, and this quiz proves it. Fifty questions cover the city from Fort Nashborough in 1779 to the Batman Building: how the Grand Ole Opry got its name, why the Ryman is the Mother Church, who invented hot chicken (and why), what the Goo Goo Cluster was first at, the Music City Miracle, the Predators' catfish, the 1960 sit-ins, the Parthenon and its 42-foot Athena, and the plantation that bred America's leading sire. It starts with easy questions any visitor can answer and works up to ones for people who have lived in Davidson County for decades. Use it for a Nashville-themed party, a bachelorette weekend, a classroom unit on Tennessee, or a pub quiz round. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question shows its source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Nashville is the capital of which US state, whose most populous city it also is?
Tennessee
It is also the state's most populous city and the seat of Davidson County, on the Cumberland River.
Q 02Nashville is named after Francis Nash, who was what?
A Revolutionary War general
The city was chartered by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1784, when Tennessee was still part of that state.
Q 03What was the name of the stockade settlement built by James Robertson and John Donelson's party in 1779?
Fort Nashborough
The site had been a French trading post called French Lick since 1714; a reconstruction of the fort stands downtown today.
Q 04On which river does Nashville sit?
Cumberland
Its position as a river port, and later a rail hub, drove early growth and made it a prize in the Civil War.
Q 05Which nickname does Nashville owe to its many colleges and universities?
Athens of the South
The nickname is why a full-scale Parthenon was chosen as the centrepiece of the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition.
Q 06Who ad-libbed 'Music City, U.S.A.' on WSM radio in 1950, coining Nashville's nickname?
David Cobb
By then recording studios were setting up to record Grand Ole Opry performers, and the 'Nashville Sound' followed in the mid-1950s.
Q 07What is the Grand Ole Opry?
A live country radio broadcast
It began as the WSM Barn Dance in 1925 and is the longest-running radio broadcast in US history.
Q 08Who founded the Grand Ole Opry as the WSM Barn Dance in November 1925?
George D. Hay
Hay, the 'Solemn Old Judge', had come from Chicago's National Barn Dance; the show took its current name in 1927 with a joke about following an hour of grand opera.
Q 09Which venue, home of the Grand Ole Opry from 1943 to 1974, is the 'Mother Church of Country Music'?
Ryman Auditorium
The Opry still returns there for winter residencies; a six-foot circle of its stage oak was inlaid into the new Opry House stage in 1974.
Q 10The Mother Church of Country Music opened in 1892 under what name?
Union Gospel Tabernacle
Riverboat and saloon owner Thomas Ryman went to heckle a revivalist, was converted instead, and built the tabernacle for him.
Q 11Which president played piano at the opening night of the Grand Ole Opry House in March 1974?
Richard Nixon
The 4,000-seat house was built nine miles east of downtown on land bought from a sausage maker, next to what became Opryland USA.
Q 12WSM's call letters come from what motto of the insurance company that founded the station?
We Shield Millions
National Life & Accident Insurance signed the station on in October 1925 as a way to sell policies.
Q 13Nashville's full-scale Parthenon replica was built for which 1897 event?
Tennessee Centennial Exposition
Q 21The Nashville Predators reached their first Stanley Cup Final in 2017. Who beat them?
Pittsburgh Penguins
During that run Keith Urban was seen on the Jumbotron hoisting a huge catfish, a Preds fan tradition, at Bridgestone Arena.
Q 22Nashville's MLS team began play in 2020 and moved in 2022 into which stadium at the Fairgrounds?
Geodis Park
The soccer-specific ground will host nine matches of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Q 23Which president's home, The Hermitage, lies ten miles east of downtown Nashville?
Andrew Jackson
He owned it from 1804 until his death there in 1845 and is buried in the garden beside his wife Rachel.
Built of plaster, wood and brick, it was never meant to be permanent; it now serves as an art museum in Centennial Park.
Q 14How tall is Alan LeQuire's statue of Athena Parthenos inside the Nashville Parthenon?
42 feet
Completed in 1990 and gilded in 2002 with more than eight pounds of gold leaf, it is the tallest indoor sculpture in the Western world.
Q 15Whose fried-chicken breakfast did a girlfriend spike with extra pepper, inventing Nashville hot chicken?
Thornton Prince
He liked it so much that by the mid-1930s he and his brothers had opened the BBQ Chicken Shack; the family's Prince's Hot Chicken Shack still runs today.
Q 16Which fast-food chain launched 'Nashville Hot Chicken' nationwide in January 2016?
KFC
Nashville has since branded itself 'The Hot Chicken Capital' and hosts a Music City Hot Chicken Festival.
Q 17The Goo Goo Cluster, made in Nashville since 1912, is credited as the first what?
Combination candy bar
It combines marshmallow nougat, caramel and peanuts in milk chocolate; the Standard Candy Company was a long-time Opry sponsor.
Q 18Which NFL team relocated from Texas in 1997 and became the Titans two years later?
Houston Oilers
They spent a season in Memphis and one at Vanderbilt Stadium before Nissan Stadium opened in 1999.
Q 19Who caught Frank Wycheck's lateral and ran 75 yards to win the 'Music City Miracle' in January 2000?
Kevin Dyson
The play, called 'Home Run Throwback', sent the Titans on a run that ended one yard short in Super Bowl XXXIV.
Q 20Which team beat the Titans 23-16 in Super Bowl XXXIV at the end of the 1999 season?
St. Louis Rams
It remains the franchise's only Super Bowl appearance; the city will host Super Bowl LXIV in 2030.
Q 24The carriage drive approaching The Hermitage mansion was laid out in what unusual shape?
A guitar
Designed by Ralph E. W. Earl, the cedar-lined loop made it easier to turn carriages in the narrow space, decades before Nashville was Music City.
Q 25Which former US president died in Nashville's 1849-50 cholera epidemic?
James K. Polk
He had left office only months earlier; the epidemic killed hundreds, and another in 1873 killed about a thousand.
Q 26In February 1862 Nashville earned what unwanted Civil War distinction?
First Confederate state capital to fall to Union troops
It followed the loss of Fort Donelson; the Confederate attempt to retake the city in December 1864 ended in a decisive Union victory.
Q 27Who designed Nashville's state capitol, called it his greatest work, and is entombed in it?
William Strickland
Built between 1845 and 1859, it is one of only 11 state capitols without a dome and one of the oldest still in use.
Q 28Nashville's Bicentennial Capitol Mall carillon has how many bells, one for each county in the state?
95
The bells stand in 50 columns around the Court of Three Stars; a 200-foot granite map of the state anchors the mall's south end.
Q 29Locals give the AT&T Building at 333 Commerce Street a superhero nickname because of what?
Its twin spires resemble a caped hero's cowl
At 617 feet and 33 storeys, completed in 1994, it is the tallest building in Tennessee.
Q 30What was Nashville's first skyscraper, completed in 1957?
Life & Casualty Tower
After the Batman Building in 1994 the skyline barely changed until the mid-2000s.