Best Nashville Tours: From Honky Tonks to Hidden History (2026 Guide)
Most Nashville tours guides cover the pedal tavern and the city bus and stop there. Nashville has those, and they are worth doing, but the city also has some of the most genuinely surprising tour experiences in the American South. A working letterpress print shop that has been running since 1879. The recording studio where Elvis made 200 songs. A civil rights history that changed the entire trajectory of America and that almost no visitors know about.
This guide covers all of it: the classic Nashville tours that deliver, the food and drink experiences worth booking, and the ones most visitors walk right past without knowing they exist.
Music History Tours
RCA Studio B
The most important recording studio in country music history sits on Music Row and offers tours that remain one of the most underrated experiences in Nashville. Elvis Presley recorded over 200 songs here. Dolly Parton, Roy Orbison, the Everly Brothers, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings all made music in these rooms. The studio is still in its original configuration, which means you stand in the same space, at the same microphone positions, where the recordings that defined American popular music were made.
Tours run through the Country Music Hall of Fame and include entry to the museum itself. Book in advance as spots fill quickly, particularly on weekends. [Book RCA Studio B Tour on Viator →]
Hatch Show Print Tour and Workshop
Hatch Show Print has been producing letterpress concert posters since 1879, making it one of the oldest continually operating letterpress shops in America. Every major artist who has played Nashville has had their show advertised on a Hatch poster: Houdini, Louis Armstrong, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and virtually every contemporary country and Americana act still working today.
The tour covers the shop’s history and active presses. The workshop option lets you pull your own print to take home. For travelers interested in design, craft, or music history, this is one of the most tactile and memorable Nashville experiences available. [Book Hatch Show Print Experience on Viator →]
Nashville Music Row Walking Tour
Music Row is two streets, 16th and 17th Avenues South, where the country music industry has operated since the 1950s. Recording studios, publishing companies, and management offices line both sides. A guided walking tour provides the context that turns a street of unremarkable buildings into a map of the most commercially successful music genre in American history. [Book Nashville Music Row Tour on Viator →]
Country Music Hall of Fame Self-Guided and Guided Tours
The museum is comprehensive enough to navigate independently but the guided tours add depth that the exhibits alone do not provide, particularly around the personal collections and costume archives. The RCA Studio B combination ticket is the best value. [Book Country Music Hall of Fame on Viator →]
Food and Drink Tours
Nashville Hot Chicken Food Tour
Hot chicken is Nashville’s most significant culinary contribution to American food culture, and a guided tour covers the origin story, the key institutions, and the spectrum of heat levels in a way that walking into random restaurants does not. You will eat at multiple stops including Prince’s Hot Chicken, where the dish was invented in the 1930s as an act of romantic revenge that accidentally created a food tradition. [Book Nashville Hot Chicken Tour on Viator →]
Nashville Honky Tonk Food and Bar Tour
A guided evening tour of Broadway and the surrounding streets with stops for food and drinks at key venues. The guide context makes the difference between wandering into random bars and understanding what you are looking at. Good for first-time visitors who want a structured introduction before exploring independently. [Book Nashville Food and Bar Tour on Viator →]
Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery Tour
The Charles Nelson story is one of the most extraordinary in American spirits history. A German-Jewish immigrant who built one of the largest whiskey operations in pre-Prohibition America, producing over 380,000 gallons annually at peak. Prohibition ended the operation in 1909. His great-great-great-grandchildren revived it in 2014 using the original recipes.
The distillery tour covers the full history and includes tasting the whiskey that carries Nelson’s name again. One of the most compelling distillery stories in Tennessee, which is saying something in a state that takes whiskey seriously. [Book Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery Tour on Viator →]
Corsair Distillery Tour
Nashville’s most experimental distillery operates in a converted factory and makes spirits that deliberately depart from Tennessee whiskey tradition. Multi-grain whiskeys, smoked malts, experimental botanical gins. The tour covers the production process and includes tastings across their range. Worth visiting as a counterpoint to the more traditional Tennessee whiskey experience. [Book Corsair Distillery Tour on Viator →]
Nashville Craft Beer and Brewery Tour
Nashville’s brewing scene has grown significantly over the past decade. A guided brewery tour moves between several of the city’s best craft operations with tastings at each stop. A good option for an afternoon before the evening begins. [Book Nashville Brewery Tour on Viator →]
History and Culture Tours
Nashville Civil Rights History Tour
This is the tour most visitors do not know exists and the one with the most genuine historical weight of anything in Nashville.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Nashville became the testing ground for the lunch counter sit-in movement that changed the course of the American civil rights struggle. The students who organized and trained here, including John Lewis, Diane Nash, and James Bevel, under the instruction of Reverend James Lawson, developed the nonviolent direct action strategy that would define the entire movement. The Nashville sit-ins of 1960 successfully desegregated the city’s lunch counters before any other major Southern city. The strategy refined here became the blueprint for Birmingham, Selma, and the March on Washington.
The sites are still standing. The Woolworth on Fifth building where the sit-ins took place still exists. The First Baptist Church on Eighth Avenue, where the students trained in nonviolent tactics, still holds services. A guided tour provides the context that turns ordinary street corners into some of the most significant locations in American history.
For international visitors especially, this tour offers a dimension of Nashville that is entirely absent from the honky tonk narrative and that reframes the city as something considerably more important than a country music destination. [Book Nashville Civil Rights Tour on Viator →]
Nashville Ghost Tour
Nashville is older than its country music reputation suggests, with a history stretching back through the Civil War, cholera epidemics, and the antebellum era that has left enough material for several different ghost tour routes. The evening tours through downtown and the historic cemetery are well-researched and consistently well-reviewed. [Book Nashville Ghost Tour on Viator →]
Belle Meade Historic Site and Winery Tour
Belle Meade is a 19th century plantation estate on the western edge of Nashville that operated as one of the most famous thoroughbred horse farms in America. The tours address both the plantation history and the stories of the enslaved people who built and ran the operation, making it one of the more honest and complete historical experiences available in the city. The property also produces wine and includes tastings. [Book Belle Meade Plantation Tour on Viator →]
The Hermitage: President Andrew Jackson’s Home
Andrew Jackson’s plantation sits fifteen minutes east of downtown and offers a complete picture of the seventh president that goes well beyond the textbook version. The guided tours cover his military career, his presidency, his complex legacy, and the lives of the over 150 enslaved people who lived and worked on the property. One of the better-contextualized plantation tours in the South. [Book The Hermitage Tour on Viator →]
Nashville Street Art and Murals Tour
Nashville has developed a serious mural culture over the past decade. The Wings in The Gulch is the most photographed, but the broader street art scene extends through East Nashville, North Nashville, and Germantown with work from both local and internationally recognized artists. A guided tour covers the stories behind the pieces in a way that changes how you look at them. [Book Nashville Street Art Tour on Viator →]
Outdoor and Adventure Tours
Cumberland River Kayak Tour
Paddling the Cumberland River through downtown Nashville offers a perspective on the city that is genuinely unlike anything available on land. The skyline from the water, the bridges, and the riverside parks read completely differently from a kayak than from a bar stool. Tours run for two to three hours and require no prior kayaking experience. [Book Nashville Kayak Tour on Viator →]
Nashville Bike Tour
A guided cycling tour covers significantly more ground than a walking tour and accesses neighborhoods that bus tours drive past without stopping. Several operators run routes through Germantown, East Nashville, and the Greenway trail system along the river. [Book Nashville Bike Tour on Viator →]
Nashville Segway Tour
A practical and slightly absurd way to cover downtown efficiently. The tours are competently run, cover significant ground in two hours, and involve less walking than you would expect. A reasonable option for visitors with limited mobility or anyone who finds the novelty appealing. [Book Nashville Segway Tour on Viator →]
Evening and Night Tours
Nashville Honky Tonk Bar Crawl
A guided evening crawl through Broadway and the surrounding streets with a local guide who knows which venues to be in at which times, where the best bands are playing, and how to navigate the strip without spending the first hour making decisions. The social dimension of doing this with a group of strangers is part of the experience. [Book Nashville Bar Crawl on Viator →]
Nashville Pedal Tavern
The Nashville pedal tavern is a multi-person vehicle where your group provides the (optional) pedaling while moving between bars. Loud, social, and a reliable generator of goodwill among participants. Best experienced as part of a bachelorette weekend or birthday group rather than as a solo traveler. [Book Nashville Pedal Tavern on Viator →]
Nashville Party Bus Tour
A step up from the pedal tavern in terms of comfort and scale. A driver takes your group between venues with music, lights, and considerably more space. Better for larger groups and anyone who does not want to be outdoors for the duration. [Book Nashville Party Bus Tour on Viator →]
Nashville Murder Mystery Dinner
A fully produced mystery dinner show running in a downtown venue, with audience participation and a period-appropriate Nashville setting. A good option for groups who want a structured evening experience before hitting the bars. [Book Nashville Murder Mystery Dinner on Viator →]
Day Trip Tours from Nashville
Jack Daniel’s Distillery Tour (Lynchburg)
The most visited distillery in America sits ninety minutes south of Nashville in Lynchburg, a town of roughly 6,000 people that happens to produce one of the world’s most recognizable spirits. The irony that Lynchburg is in a dry county, meaning you can tour the distillery and smell the whiskey but cannot buy a drink in the town, is not lost on anyone. Tours run several times daily and cover the full production process. [Book Jack Daniel’s Distillery Tour from Nashville on Viator →]
George Jones Museum and Tennessee Music Triangle Day Trip
A guided day trip connecting Nashville’s music history to the broader Tennessee music landscape, including sites associated with artists who shaped the country music canon outside of the city itself. [Book Tennessee Music Day Trip on Viator →]
Mammoth Cave Day Trip
The world’s longest known cave system sits two hours north of Nashville in Kentucky and offers a geological and historical experience entirely unlike anything else in the region. Guided tours run at multiple levels of intensity from easy walking tours to more adventurous crawling routes. [Book Mammoth Cave Day Trip from Nashville on Viator →]
How to Book Nashville Tours
Book in advance for anything in the evening. Nashville’s popular evening tours, particularly bar crawls, pedal taverns, and ghost tours, sell out on weekend nights weeks ahead. Same-day availability exists but is unreliable during peak season.
Check cancellation policies before booking. Weather, group size changes, and itinerary adjustments happen on every trip. Most reputable Viator operators offer free cancellation up to 24 hours before the tour.
Morning tours are significantly less crowded. The RCA Studio B tour, Hatch Show Print, and historical walking tours are best experienced earlier in the day before the tourist infrastructure fully wakes up.
Private tours are worth the premium for groups. Many Nashville tour operators offer private versions of their standard tours. For groups of six or more, the per-person price difference between private and public often narrows to the point where privacy and flexibility make the upgrade worthwhile.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the most popular tour in Nashville? The honky tonk bar crawl and pedal tavern experience are the most booked Nashville tours by volume. The RCA Studio B tour is consistently rated the most meaningful by visitors who take it.
Are Nashville tours worth it? The music history tours, particularly RCA Studio B and Hatch Show Print, offer access and context that independent exploration cannot replicate. The food tours are worth it for first-time visitors. Evening bar crawls add social energy to Broadway that solo exploration lacks.
How long are Nashville tours? Most Nashville tours run two to four hours. Full-day tours and day trips to distilleries or Mammoth Cave run six to eight hours. The RCA Studio B tour combined with the Country Music Hall of Fame can fill a full morning and afternoon.
Do Nashville tours include drinks? Food and bar tours typically include a set number of drinks at each stop with additional drinks available for purchase. Pedal taverns and party buses may offer a BYOB policy or have drinks available on board. Confirm with your specific operator before booking.
Can you do Nashville tours without a car? Yes. All downtown tours, Broadway crawls, and walking tours are accessible without a vehicle. Day trips to Jack Daniel’s and Mammoth Cave require either a tour operator’s transportation or a rental car.
Planning your Nashville trip? See where to stay for every budget and neighborhood: [Where to Stay in Nashville →] Planning a bachelorette party? Read the complete guide: [Nashville Bachelorette Party Guide →]