Nashville Map
Nashville has governed all of Davidson County since 1963, one of the earliest big-city consolidations in the country, and counted about 730,000 residents in 2024.
Where is Nashville?
Nashville is in north-central Tennessee, on the Cumberland River in the shallow bowl of the Nashville Basin. Tennessee is a long, narrow state, and Nashville sits close to its middle. It is about 210 miles northeast of Memphis, roughly 175 miles southwest of Louisville, and some 250 miles northwest of Atlanta.
Nashville at a glance
| State | Tennessee |
| County | Davidson County |
| Population | 729,505 (2024 Census estimate) |
| Rank among US cities | No. 20 of the 100 largest |
| Time zone | Central Time |
| Region | South (East South Central division) |
No. 20 on the 2024 list is a margin of 51,490 people: that is how far Nashville trails Seattle, while Denver is 486 further back. Memphis is the only other Tennessee city on the list. That is about 10% of Tennessee's 7.23 million residents inside a single municipal line. City and county are one outline here: Davidson County and the city limits enclose the same 729,505 people.
Nashville in Tennessee
The consolidated city-county means Nashville and Davidson County share one outline on the Tennessee county map, though a handful of satellite cities kept their own governments inside it. Tennessee's three grand divisions each have their own center: Memphis in the west, Nashville in the middle, Knoxville and Chattanooga in the east. The Tennessee state page and the capitals map both place the state capital here.
The Nashville Basin and the Cumberland
The Nashville Basin is an eroded dome: rock layers arched upward, then the top wore away, leaving a low limestone plain rimmed by the Highland Rim. The soils in the basin are rich, which drew settlement early, and the limestone beneath them is close enough to the surface that it was quarried for the city's older buildings. The Cumberland River loops through the city on its way to the Ohio, giving Nashville river access without the flood exposure of a Mississippi town, though the 1,000-year flood of May 2010 showed the limit of that protection. East of the Highland Rim the land steps up onto the Cumberland Plateau, the western wall of the Appalachians.
Cities near Nashville
Nearby cities include Memphis, Louisville, Lexington, Atlanta and St. Louis. For the region as a whole, see the South region page.