Where Is the Country Music Hall of Fame?

February 19, 2026

The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is located at 222 Fifth Avenue South in Nashville’s SoBro neighborhood, directly south of Lower Broadway and three blocks from the main honky-tonk cluster. It is connected to the Music City Center convention complex by a glass-enclosed pedestrian bridge. The walk from Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge on Broadway to the Hall of Fame entrance takes less than ten minutes.

The Building

The Country Music Hall of Fame opened its current building in 2001 after decades in an earlier structure. The architecture is designed with intentional references to country music: the building’s shape evokes a bass clef when viewed from above, the windows along one facade echo piano keys, and the rotunda roof was modeled on the round piano windows of Hatch Show Print. These design choices are either charming or heavy-handed depending on your tolerance for concept architecture.

The museum underwent a major expansion in 2014 that nearly doubled its size, adding the Ford Theater performance space and the CMA Theater for concerts and events, plus substantially more exhibit space.

What’s Inside

The permanent collection covers country music history from its roots in Appalachian folk, blues, and gospel traditions through the development of the Nashville Sound in the 1950s and 1960s, through outlaw country, the pop-country crossover era, and into the present. The physical artifacts include Elvis Presley’s solid gold Cadillac, stage costumes, instruments, master recordings, and archives.

Rotating exhibits change regularly and frequently focus on specific artists or eras. Taylor Swift exhibits have drawn significant tourist traffic when active. The museum also includes access to RCA Studio B tours as part of certain ticket packages.

Tickets and Hours

Adult admission is $29.95 as of recent pricing. Hours are generally 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours during peak seasons. The museum can take two to three hours to see comprehensively, or significantly longer if you engage deeply with the audio elements and interactive exhibits. Ticket lines can be long on summer weekends; the museum offers online ticket purchasing in advance.

Tickets and Hours

Adult admission is $29.95 as of recent pricing. Hours are generally 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with extended hours during peak seasons. The museum can take two to three hours to see comprehensively, or significantly longer if you engage deeply with the audio elements and interactive exhibits. Ticket lines can be long on summer weekends; the museum offers online ticket purchasing in advance.

Certain ticket tiers include access to RCA Studio B tours, which requires a separate shuttle to Music Row. If you want to do both the Hall of Fame and Studio B in the same day, book the combined ticket in advance. Walk-in availability for Studio B tours is limited.

The Practical Connection to Broadway

Many visitors arrive on Broadway, realize they want more historical depth than the honky-tonks provide, and walk to the Hall of Fame to fill that context. This is the correct sequence. The Hall of Fame explains what Broadway was built on. Broadway shows what it currently looks like. Seeing both in the same visit gives you the complete picture.

The museum’s gift shop is one of the better places in the city to buy music-related books, archival recordings, and merchandise that is not available elsewhere. It functions differently from the Broadway souvenir shops, which skew toward novelty items. If you are buying something music-related to take home, the Hall of Fame shop is worth a look before defaulting to the Broadway storefronts.

What the Hall of Fame Does That Broadway Cannot

Broadway gives you the current expression of Nashville’s music identity: live performance, neon, and volume. The Hall of Fame gives you the historical record. It holds master recordings, handwritten lyrics, contracts, correspondence, and instruments that belong to the canon of American music, not just country music. The connections between country, gospel, blues, and R&B are documented in a way that changes how you hear the music playing a block away. Going to Broadway without visiting the Hall of Fame is like reading the last chapter of a book without the first ten.

Sources

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