Nashville — While the Atlanta Symphony's dream of a new concert hall is at least $200 million and a decade or more from reality, the Nashville Symphony is savoring its inaugural season in the stunning new Schermerhorn Symphony Center.

The city's recently opened concert venue is the newest of many attractions that draw tourists back again and again.

Nashville Symphony (ENLARGE)

Nashville's new Schermerhorn Symphony Center on Third Avenue keeps time with more traditional attractions in the downtown entertainment district.

(ENLARGE)

Nashville's new Symphony Center is a neoclassical design.

Dedicated in September and named for longtime NSO Music Director Kenneth Schermerhorn, who died before the building was completed, the Schermerhorn fits in perfectly with Music City's more traditional attractions. Across a park from the Country Music Hall of Fame, it's a short walk from Ryman Auditorium, Tootsie's Orchid Lounge and other honky-tonks and saloons, record and souvenir stores on Broadway and Second Avenue.

Nashville beat its larger Southern rival to the opening baton by choosing a traditional neoclassical design for a symphony hall that cost $123 million. Atlanta, on the other hand, has pinned its hopes on Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, renowned for his "Jetsons"-ish Milwaukee Art Museum and other museums, public buildings and bridges in the United States and Europe. He has designed a futuristic Atlanta symphony center, estimated to cost about $300 million. So far only about a third has been raised.

The Schermerhorn's neoclassical style was no budget-cutting, timesaving maneuver, says NSO President and CEO Alan Valentine.

"Nashville has a love for neoclassical things," he explained. "One of its monikers is 'Athens of the South,' because of its many colleges and universities and the world's only full-scale replica of the Parthenon. We looked at halls around this country and in Europe to see what elements we could incorporate here.

"Our overriding concern was acoustics," Valentine added. "All the elements in the main hall [the 1,846-seat Laura Turner Concert Hall], including the shoe box shape, the balconies and galleries, columns, ceiling and the walls, contribute to our perfect acoustics."

Clerestory windows, rare in concert venues, let in natural daytime light and also assist in moving the music evenly through the hall. Convertible seating can quickly transform the tiered hall into a 5,400-square-foot flat wooden parquet floor for pops and jazz performances, ballroom dancing and seated dinners.

Visitors looking for more highbrow entertainment should take in the Frist Center for Visual Arts' "Matisse, Picasso and the School of Paris" exhibit. Running through June 3, the 64 paintings, sculptures and works on paper, on loan from the Baltimore Museum of Art, include 27 works by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, many of them collected by Baltimore sisters Etta and Claribel Cone, who met the artists in the 1920s at Gertrude Stein's Paris salons. Also included are works by Degas, Monet, Cézanne, Gauguin and van Gogh and surrealists Joan Miró and Max Ernst.

Through Dec. 31, the Country Music Hall of Fame is featuring a 5,000-square-foot multimedia tribute to Ray Charles' profound contributions to country music. His recording of "I Can't Stop Loving You" and renditions of other classics helped change mainstream America's perception of country music. While you're there, spend a couple of hours walking and listening your way through country music history from the Carter Family and "Yodeling Brakeman" Jimmie Rodgers to the birth of the Grand Ole Opry and today's country headliners.

What would a trip to Music City be without some good ol' country music? From early morning to way after midnight, Tootsie's (422 Broadway, 615-726-0463); the Stage (412 Broadway, 615-726-0504); Second Fiddle (420 Broadway, 615-248-4818); and other honky-tonks offer live music for the price of a beer. Some of the free music is pretty bad, and the cigarette smoke is three-alarm, but it's still a kick-in-the-pants whole lot of fun.

The Wildhorse Saloon (120 Second Ave. N., 615-902-8200), owned by the Opryland folks, has top-notch bands and one of Music City's biggest dance floors. The Hard Rock Café, the Charlie Daniels Museum and B.B King's Blues Club are on the same block.

Away from the downtown entertainment district, the Station Inn (402 12th Ave. S., 615-255-3307) is Nashvillians' favorite place to tap their feet and clap their hands to traditional bluegrass music. The Bluebird Café (4104 Hillsboro Pike, 615-383-1461) is where singer/songwriters gather to play in a cozy setting, with tasty food and drinks. You never know when you might be sharing your table with a really big-name artist.