The Hermitage Hotel ★★★★★

A Beaux-Arts Landmark Two Blocks From the Capitol

The Hermitage Hotel opened in 1910 as Nashville’s first grand hotel, commissioned at a moment when the city wanted an address that could receive presidents and still feel like a private club. Tennessee-born architect James Carpenter, trained at Paris’s École des Beaux-Arts, gave the building its stained-glass lobby ceiling, its marble columns, and a restraint that has kept it from reading as a museum piece a century on. The hotel still sits two blocks from the State Capitol, and the guest list over the decades — entertainer Gene Autry among the names that recur in hotel lore — reads like a short history of who passed through Nashville on business, not only for the music. A 2003 renovation modernized the rooms and mechanical systems without touching the public spaces that make the building worth the detour in the first place.

Why It Works

We chose The Hermitage Hotel for three reasons that rarely come together in one address: an intact Beaux-Arts interior that nobody has flattened into a generic lobby, a kitchen — The Capitol Grille — that takes Tennessee produce seriously rather than as a marketing line, and rooms sized and furnished to feel residential rather than stacked. The spa and fitness center are genuine additions, not afterthoughts bolted on for a star rating. For a traveler who wants downtown Nashville’s walkability without trading away quiet, carpeted hallways and a lobby built before neon was a design language, this is the address that delivers both.

Why This Location

The hotel sits in Downtown Nashville’s Capitol district, close enough to the Tennessee State Capitol to see it from the street and a five-minute walk from the museums and theatres that cluster around the civic core. Broadway’s honky-tonks and the Country Music Hall of Fame are an easy walk south-east, so the famous strip is reachable without committing to stay inside its noise. The address works for a business trip that ends at the Capitol by day and a dinner reservation that doesn’t require a car by night — a rarer combination in a city largely built around driving between districts.

Fast Facts

• Prix: €€€€

• Vibe: Beaux-Arts grandeur, hushed and residential

• Chambres: 122 rooms and suites, including roughly 60 m² Junior Suites

• Best For: culture-minded couples, business travelers, history buffs

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the original stained-glass ceiling over the lobby

• Dining: The Capitol Grille, farm-to-table Southern cooking, 106 seats, private dining available

• Amenities: on-site spa, fitness center, business center, pet-friendly rooms

• Attractions: Tennessee State Capitol (5-min walk), Country Music Hall of Fame, Frist Art Museum, Broadway honky-tonks

Rooms Built to Feel Like Home

The 122 rooms and suites lean into a residential register rather than a hotel-standard one: sitting areas, writing desks, and fabrics that read more like a well-kept townhouse than a chain property. The Junior Suites, at roughly 650 square feet, add a proper seating area that works equally for a business call and a slow breakfast. Bathrooms keep to a classic marble-and-brass vocabulary that matches the public areas downstairs rather than chasing a trend the hotel will outgrow in five years. It is a quieter kind of luxury than Nashville’s newer design hotels attempt, and it reads as deliberate rather than dated.

The Capitol Grille and the Veranda

Dinner happens at The Capitol Grille, a 106-seat dining room built around Tennessee produce and Southern technique rather than a chef’s imported signature — the kind of menu that changes with what a nearby farm actually has that week, and one of the few hotel restaurants downtown that locals choose on their own. Private dining is available for groups who want the room without the rest of the restaurant around them. Afterward, The Veranda offers a quieter alternative to Broadway’s bars, close enough to hear the city without standing in the middle of it. For a hotel built on its history, the food program avoids the trap of coasting on the architecture — it is run as a destination restaurant in its own right, not a lobby amenity.