A Nashville Itinerary for 3 Days, Planned Hour by Hour

The museum that justifies the genre to sceptics: Cash's black suits, Patsy Cline's cocktail dresses, a rotunda inscribed with every inductee's plaque. Two to three hours is honest. Note that the Historic RCA Studio B tour is a separate 23-dollar add-on and does not happen here - it leaves by shuttle for Music Row, so treat it as a day-two block instead of squeezing it in now.

The catch: Add-ons stack fast: audio tour 5 dollars, Hatch Show Print tour 23, and the everything ticket reaches 82.95.

The Mother Church of Country Music, a former tabernacle with wooden pews and the best acoustics in the South, a measured six minutes from the Hall of Fame. The self-guided tour is 36.39 dollars including fees and takes about an hour; the guided backstage version is 46.85 and runs 90 minutes. Check the date before you go - on show days the tour hours close early, sometimes by mid-afternoon.

Five measured minutes from the Hall of Fame on 3rd Avenue, and a good deal denser than its size suggests - the wall of singles, the Folsom footage, the letters. Adult tickets are 32.95 plus tax with youth 6 to 15 at 28.95, and there is a dollar off in person for seniors, students, military and AAA. Open until 7pm, which makes it the flexible slot in the day.

The catch: The neighbouring Patsy Cline Museum has closed and the Cash museum is expanding into the space, so any older itinerary sending you to both is out of date.

Four blocks of neon and open doors, with bands playing from late morning and the tip jar as the business model rather than a cover charge. Robert's Western World is the one to start at, and its rule matters for families: all ages until 6pm, 21 and over after. Neither Robert's nor Tootsie's publishes a cover charge on its own site, so carry cash for the band and go early if you have children.

The catch: This is the loudest, most bachelorette-heavy four blocks in America on a Saturday - go on a weeknight if that is not your scene.

Six measured minutes from Broadway, the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge crosses the Cumberland and gives the skyline photograph everyone comes home with, free and open all night. Walk to the far side for the view back over the neon.

The room where Elvis cut more than 200 songs and Dolly recorded her early hits, still with the original piano. It is a 23-dollar add-on to a Hall of Fame ticket and can only be booked that way, departing by shuttle from the museum rather than being visited independently - which is why it lands on day two rather than day one. The bundle with museum admission is 54.95.

The catch: You cannot buy it standalone at the studio, and shuttle departure times are not published online - confirm when you buy.

Nashville's actual contribution to world food: cayenne-lacquered fried chicken that runs from mild to genuinely dangerous. Hattie B's Midtown is the convenient one on this route, a measured 15 minutes from Vanderbilt, and the chain openly promotes app ordering to skip the line, which tells you what the queue is like. Prince's, the originator, now trades from Nolensville Pike, the airport and a downtown food hall stall.

The catch: Order one heat level below your instinct. Hot means hot here, and the shouting menu is not a joke.

A full-scale concrete replica of the Athenian Parthenon with a 42-foot gilded Athena inside, built for the 1897 exposition and never taken down. Adults 15 dollars, seniors and youth 4 to 17 ten, under-4s free, open Monday to Saturday 9am to 4.30pm and Sunday afternoons. The practical trap: tickets are sold only at the on-site counter, there is no online general admission, and a 2.3 percent card fee applies with phone wallets not accepted at the kiosk.

Free, large and much better than free museums usually are, covering the state from the Mississippian mound-builders to the Civil War and the Nashville sit-ins. The trap for a three-day trip is the closure: it shuts on Mondays entirely, opening Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 5pm and Sunday afternoons only. Plan the day around that, not the other way round.

The catch: Closed Mondays, which catches a lot of weekend-plus-Monday trips.

A Greek Revival capitol on the hill above the museum, a measured 15 minutes' walk, with free tours that need no reservation - guided at 9, 10, 11am and 1, 2, 3pm, self-guided 9am to 4pm, entering at the West Entrance. It is weekdays only, so a Saturday trip gets the exterior and the Bicentennial Mall park below it, which costs nothing either.

The radio show that made Nashville, running since 1925 and now in its centennial Opry 100 era. The daytime backstage tour is 46.65 dollars including fees and takes you into the dressing rooms and onto the circle of Ryman oak set into the stage; the post-show tour is 45 dollars but requires a ticket to the show before it. Show tickets are sold through AXS and priced by date, so check yours before booking a hotel - the Opry moves to the Ryman downtown for part of the winter, which changes where you need to be.

The catch: The Opry House sits by Opry Mills, well out of downtown - budget a ride each way, and check which venue your date is at.

The alternative morning if you have a car: half an hour south to a walkable historic Main Street, with Carnton's house tour at 22 dollars for adults and 14 for children, and 90-minute specialist tours at 29 including one on the enslaved people who lived and worked there. Last guided tour is 4pm.

Pick up the Parkway near Franklin and drive as far south as the afternoon allows. It costs nothing, bans commercial traffic along its whole length and holds the 50 mph limit, which makes it the most restful hour you will spend near Nashville. The double-arch bridge over Highway 96 is the photograph; take it from the road below rather than the deck.