Nineteen acres of outdoor museum surround this plaza: Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, opened in 1996 to mark the two-hundredth anniversary of Tennessee's statehood. The park tells state history through landscape rather than museum walls. A granite map of Tennessee is embedded in the central plaza.
Ninety-five carillon bells, one for each county, hang in a tower at the north end. A two-hundred-foot wall chronicles the state from 1796 to 1996. A World War Two memorial honors Tennessee's enormous contribution to that conflict — the state sent more volunteers per capita than nearly any other and claimed Alvin York, the most decorated American soldier of the First World War, as a native son.
The park occupies ground that was once a working warehouse district north of the capitol. Its transformation into a green civic space facing the capitol's north elevation was part of Nashville's downtown reclamation. On summer evenings the farmers' market adjacent to the park fills with vendors and residents in one of the city's best outdoor public gatherings.