Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville 1996

The Tennessee State Capitol, located in Nashville, Tennessee, is the home of the Tennessee legislature, the location of the governor's office, and a National Historic Landmark. Designed by architect William Strickland, it is one of Nashville's most prominent examples of Greek Revival architecture. It is one of only eleven state capitols (along with those of Delaware, Hawaii, Louisiana, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Alaska and Virginia) that does not have a dome.

Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the music, health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home to a large number of colleges and universities. Reflecting the city's position in state government, Nashville is home to the Tennessee Supreme Court's courthouse for Middle Tennessee. It is most notably known as a center of the music industry, earning it the nickname "Music City".

Nashville has a consolidated city–county government which includes six smaller municipalities in a two-tier system. As of the 2010 census the population of the city of Nashville, not including the semi-independent municipalities, stood at 601,222. The population of Davidson County as a whole, including all municipalities, was 626,681. Nashville is the second largest city in Tennessee, after Memphis, and the fourth largest city in the Southeastern United States. The 2010 population of the entire 13-county Nashville metropolitan area was 1,589,934, making it the largest Metropolitan Statistical Area in the state. The 2010 population of the Nashville-Davidson–Murfreesboro–Columbia combined statistical area, a larger trade area, was 1,670,890.