Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the second most populous city in the state after Memphis, although its Metropolitan Statistical Area population exceeds that of Memphis. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. Nashville is a major hub for the health care, music, publishing, banking and transportation industries.

Nashville has a consolidated city-county government which includes seven smaller municipalities in a two-tier system. The population of Nashville-Davidson County stood at 607,413 as of 2005, according to United States Census Bureau estimates. The 2005 population of the entire 13-county Nashville Metropolitan Statistical Area was 1,498,836, blank">Census Population Estimates for 2005 - Counties making it the largest and fastest-growing _metropolitan area in the state.