Back in 1897 this green space hosted the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, a world's fair held one year late to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Tennessee statehood, and today it is Centennial Park, Nashville's premier urban green space. The exposition drew more than a million visitors to Nashville over six months and featured exhibition halls, international pavilions, a reconstructed Egyptian temple, and the building that would make the event permanently famous: a full-scale replica of the Athenian Parthenon, built in wood and plaster as the exposition's centerpiece art gallery. When the exposition ended and the temporary buildings were demolished, Nashvillians refused to tear down the Parthenon.
It stood in deteriorating wood and plaster for decades until a permanent concrete replica was constructed on the same site in the 1920s, completed in 1931. The park that surrounds it is a beloved Nashville institution — a large urban green space with a lake, walking paths, the Centennial Art Center, a farmers' market on weekends, and the summer concert series that brings thousands of Nashville residents to this lawn. On a pleasant day it is one of the best places in the city to observe Nashville as a city rather than Nashville as a tourism destination.