Best Cemetery Champions in Nashville 2026: Nashville City Cemetery
The folks at Nashville City Cemetery want us to know that cemeteries aren’t just for the dead, goth and ghostly. The site is a font of Nashville history — and a lovely green space to enjoy in the middle of the city. Bryan Gilley, the first dedicated staffer in recent history, advocates for needed structural improvements and the use of technology to discover unmarked graves. Recently, that led to adding a bench honoring the enslaved buried there (as Betsy Phillips writes about elsewhere in this section). With a new investment from the city, more will rest in peace, and the cemetery will serve the living for years to come.
