Nashville Trivia
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46 free Nashville trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
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 46 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton and the Everly Brothers all recorded at which Music Row studio, built in 1957?
RCA Studio B
RCA Studio B, run for years by producer Chet Atkins, became the birthplace of the smooth 'Nashville Sound', whose strings and background vocals helped make the city an international recording centre.
Q 02Nashville is named after Francis Nash, who was what?
A Revolutionary War general
Francis Nash was a Revolutionary War general in the Continental Army, mortally wounded at the Battle of Germantown in 1777; North Carolina's legislature named the town for him in 1784.
Q 03What was the name of the stockade that James Robertson's and John Donelson's settlers founded in 1779-80?
Fort Nashborough
Fort Nashborough began when Robertson's men drove their cattle across the frozen river at Christmas 1779; Donelson's boats followed with the families, ending a thousand-mile river voyage in April 1780.
Q 04On which river does Nashville sit?
Cumberland
Nashville sits on the Cumberland River, a tributary of the Ohio; its role as a river port and later rail hub drove early growth and made it a Civil War prize.
Q 05Nashville is called the Athens of the South for its many what?
Colleges
Colleges: the nickname came first, and it is why Nashville chose a full-scale copy of the Parthenon as a showpiece and later rebuilt it to last.
Q 06Which downtown Nashville festival, launched in 1972 as Fan Fair, draws country music fans each summer?
CMA Fest
CMA Fest began as Fan Fair because so many fans were turning up at the industry's annual disc jockey convention that organisers gave them an event of their own, with days of concerts and autograph sessions.
Q 07What is the Grand Ole Opry?
A live country radio broadcast
A live country radio broadcast: the Opry has gone out on WSM every week since 1925, and in 2020 it kept the streak alive by playing its Saturday shows to an empty house during the pandemic.
Q 08Which announcer, the 'Solemn Old Judge', founded the Grand Ole Opry as the WSM Barn Dance in 1925?
George D. Hay
George D. Hay was no judge and barely 30: he set out to recreate Chicago's National Barn Dance, where he had been the announcer, and renamed his Nashville version the Grand Ole Opry in 1927.
Q 09What did the Grand Ole Opry bring from the Ryman Auditorium to its new home in 1974?
A circle of the stage floor
A circle of the stage floor: carpenters cut a six-foot round of oak from the Ryman's boards and set it centre stage at the new Opry House, so that performers there would stand on the same wood as the legends before them.
Q 10Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, the Mother Church of Country Music, opened in 1892 under what name?
Union Gospel Tabernacle
Union Gospel Tabernacle was built by riverboat captain Thomas Ryman, who is said to have gone to a revival meeting to heckle the preacher, was converted instead, and built him a church.
Q 11Which president played piano at the opening night of the Grand Ole Opry House in March 1974?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon opened the Grand Ole Opry House on 16 March 1974, playing 'Happy Birthday' on the piano for his wife Pat and taking a yo-yo lesson on stage from Roy Acuff.
Q 12WSM's call letters come from what motto of the company that founded the station?
We Shield Millions
WSM stands for 'We Shield Millions', the slogan of National Life & Accident Insurance, which signed the station on in October 1925 partly as a way to sell policies.
Q 13Nashville's full-scale Parthenon replica was built for which 1897 event?
Tennessee Centennial Exposition
Q 21Nashville's MLS team began play in 2020 and moved in 2022 into which stadium at the Fairgrounds?
Geodis Park
Geodis Park opened at the Fairgrounds in May 2022 as the largest soccer-specific stadium in the United States, with 30,000 seats; Nashville SC had spent its first two MLS seasons borrowing the Titans' NFL stadium.
Q 22Which president's home, The Hermitage, lies just east of Nashville?
Andrew Jackson
Andrew Jackson buried his wife Rachel in the Hermitage garden after she died weeks before his 1829 inauguration, and he was laid beside her when he died there in 1845.
Q 23The cedar-lined carriage drive at The Hermitage, a presidential home near Nashville, was laid out in what shape?
A guitar
The Parthenon was the centrepiece of the 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition; built of plaster, wood and brick as a temporary pavilion, it was rebuilt in concrete in the 1920s and houses an art museum in Centennial Park.
Q 14Nashville's 42-foot Athena statue stood plain white from 1990 until 2002, when it was finished with what?
Gold leaf
Gold leaf: Alan LeQuire's Athena was unveiled bare, and it took twelve more years of fundraising to pay for the gilding and paint that bring her close to the lost ancient Greek original.
Q 15Which Nashville restaurant traces hot chicken to a girlfriend's peppery revenge on its founder?
Prince's
Prince's Hot Chicken Shack: Thornton Prince's girlfriend is said to have doused his fried chicken in pepper after a night out, but he liked it so much that he and his brothers began selling it.
Q 16Which fast-food chain launched 'Nashville Hot Chicken' nationwide in January 2016?
KFC
KFC took Nashville Hot Chicken nationwide after a test run in Pennsylvania that the chain called the most successful product trial in its recent history.
Q 17Which NFL team moved to Tennessee in 1997 and took the name Titans two years later?
Houston Oilers
The Houston Oilers kept the Oilers name for two stopgap seasons in Tennessee, drawing some of the NFL's smallest crowds in 1997 before a switch to a Nashville college stadium lifted attendance in 1998.
Q 18Who caught Frank Wycheck's lateral and ran 75 yards to win the 'Music City Miracle' in January 2000?
Kevin Dyson
Kevin Dyson took Frank Wycheck's lateral and ran 75 yards for the winning touchdown against Buffalo; the play, 'Home Run Throwback', sent the Titans on a run that ended one yard short in Super Bowl XXXIV.
Q 19Which team beat the Titans 23-16 in Super Bowl XXXIV in January 2000?
St. Louis Rams
The St. Louis Rams held on when linebacker Mike Jones dragged down a Titans receiver one yard short of the tying touchdown on the final play, a stop remembered simply as 'The Tackle'.
Q 20Which team beat the Nashville Predators in their first Stanley Cup Final, in 2017?
Pittsburgh Penguins
The Pittsburgh Penguins beat Nashville in six games, clinching 2-0 in Game 6 at Bridgestone Arena on 11 June 2017, where fans kept up the tradition of throwing catfish onto the ice.
A guitar shape, designed by Ralph E. W. Earl, made it easier to turn carriages in the narrow space, decades before Nashville was Music City.
Q 24Which former US president died in Nashville's 1849-50 cholera epidemic?
James K. Polk
James K. Polk fell ill after a farewell tour of the South that took him through cholera-stricken New Orleans, and died at his new Nashville home barely three months after leaving the White House.
Q 25In February 1862 Nashville earned what unwanted Civil War distinction?
First Confederate state capital to fall
Nashville became the first Confederate state capital to fall when Union troops marched in on 25 February 1862, days after Fort Donelson surrendered; Hood's attempt to retake it in December 1864 ended in a rout.
Q 26Where was architect William Strickland entombed after dying while building Tennessee's State Capitol?
Within its walls
Within its walls: Strickland had asked to be buried in the capitol he designed, and the legislature honoured the wish, so he was laid in a vault there five years before the building was finished.
Q 27The 95 carillon bells at Nashville's Bicentennial Capitol Mall each stand for one of Tennessee's what?
Counties
Counties: Tennessee has 95, and a 96th bell up the hill at the State Capitol rings in answer, standing for the government answering the call of the people.
Q 28Why is Nashville's 333 Commerce tower nicknamed the Batman Building?
Its twin spires resemble a caped hero's cowl
Its twin spires resemble a caped hero's cowl; long called the AT&T Building, the 617-foot tower even stood for Nashville on Tennessee driver's licences until a 2024 redesign.
Q 29Which future superstar won his record deal at Nashville's Bluebird Café in 1988 after filling in for a sick songwriter?
Garth Brooks
Garth Brooks went on when another writer fell ill, and a Capitol Records executive who had already turned him down changed his mind after watching the crowd, calling him into the kitchen to talk terms.
Q 30The Nashville sit-ins of 1960 targeted what kind of segregated facility?
Downtown lunch counters
Downtown lunch counters were the target: students trained in nonviolence by the Reverend James Lawson kept coming back through beatings and arrests until the stores began serving Black customers on 10 May 1960.