The best shopping in Nashville depends on what you’re after: boots and souvenirs on Lower Broadway, independent boutiques on 12th Avenue South, records and vintage in East Nashville, luxury brands at the Mall at Green Hills, and outlet prices at Opry Mills or Tanger Outlets in Antioch. Every purchase carries Davidson County’s 9.75% sales tax.

This guide maps the city district by district, with store hours, parking, travel times from Broadway and honest notes on what’s worth the money. The caveat: the districts are miles apart, and only downtown is walkable from most hotels, so pick one or two areas for an afternoon rather than trying to cover the whole city between lunch and the first set at the Ryman.

Last updated October 11, 2026. Prices, rules and details checked October 2026.

The Short Version

Start with what you want to bring home, then go to the district that does it best.

If you want…	Go to	Know this first
Cowboy boots	Lower Broadway, starting with Boot Barn at 318 Broadway	The “buy one, get two free” signs are only a deal if you want three pairs
Boutique clothes and gifts	12South	Imogene + Willie, Draper James, Emerson Grace and more within about half a mile
Vinyl	Third Man Records and Grimey’s	Third Man opens 11am to 6pm daily; Grimey’s is out on East Trinity Lane
Luxury brands	The Mall at Green Hills	Nordstrom, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co. and Apple under one roof
Outlet prices	Opry Mills or Tanger Outlets	Opry Mills has 200+ stores; Tanger has 60 and stays open later
Edible souvenirs	Goo Goo Chocolate Co. and the Nashville Farmers’ Market	The Goo Goo Cluster was invented in Nashville in 1912
Art and posters	Hatch Show Print and the Arcade	Hatch’s gallery is free; the Arcade’s galleries open late on First Saturday
Bargains and oddities	The Nashville Flea Market	Fourth weekend of each month (third in December), free admission

How do Nashville’s shopping districts compare?

Here’s the field at a glance. Travel times are typical by car or rideshare from Lower Broadway outside rush hour; the time column is how long a browsing visit usually takes.

District	Best for	From Broadway	Parking	Time needed
Lower Broadway and SoBro	Boots, hats, souvenirs, posters, chocolate	You’re there	Metro garages $3 to $20 a day; meters $2 to $6 an hour	1 to 2 hours
12South	Independent boutiques, denim, gifts	10 to 15 minutes	Street parking that fills on weekends	About 2 hours
East Nashville	Records, vintage, local makers	About 10 minutes	Street parking and small lots	About 2 hours
The Gulch and 7th Avenue South	Boutiques, Third Man Records	15 to 20 minutes on foot	Paid garages	About 1 hour
Green Hills	Luxury and department stores	15 to 20 minutes	Mall garages and lots	2 to 3 hours
Opry Mills	Outlets and big brands	15 to 20 minutes	Large surface lots	3 hours or more
Tanger Outlets (Antioch)	Outlets	20 to 25 minutes	Surface lots	About 2 hours
Germantown and the Farmers’ Market	Food, plants, small shops	5 minutes by car, 25 on foot	Market lots	1 to 2 hours

The pattern is simple. Downtown sells Nashville the brand: boots, hats, T-shirts and posters, with prices that reflect the foot traffic. The neighborhoods sell Nashville the place: designers, makers, record collectors and vintage dealers who opened shops where the rent was lower. The malls and outlets sell the same brands you can buy at home, sometimes for less. Most visitors are happiest with one downtown hour for souvenirs and one neighborhood afternoon for everything else.

What does sales tax add to shopping in Nashville?

Davidson County’s combined sales tax is 9.75%: Tennessee’s 7% state rate plus 2.75% local, which includes a half-cent transit surcharge in effect since February 1, 2025. Older guides quote the lower pre-2025 rate, so ignore them. Tennessee’s combined rates are among the highest in the country. On a $250 pair of boots, that’s $24.38 in tax, so you pay $274.38; on a $40 T-shirt, it’s $3.90. Tennessee has no state income tax, which is part of why the sales tax runs this high, and Tennessee offers no sales-tax refund for international visitors, so the tax you pay at the register stays paid.

The one break is Tennessee’s annual sales tax holiday, which starts on the last Friday of July and runs through Sunday. In 2026 it ran from 12:01am Friday, July 31 to 11:59pm Sunday, August 2, and clothing and school supplies priced at $100 or less per item were tax-free, including online orders. Accessories and sports or protective equipment didn’t qualify, and the $100 limit applies per item, so a $150 pair of boots stays fully taxed. If your trip lands on that weekend, plan the T-shirts and jeans for it; the boots, sadly, are on you.

One more tax worth knowing if your shopping turns into a bar crawl: cocktails, wine and spirits poured at a bar pay Tennessee’s 15% liquor-by-the-drink tax on top of the 9.75%, or 24.75% in all, while beer pays sales tax only.

Nashville’s best shopping districts, ranked

The ranking weighs what a visitor can find nowhere else, how pleasant the district is to wander, and how easy it is to reach in a half day. Big-box and chain shopping ranks lower not because it’s bad but because you can do it at home.

1. 12South

12South is the city’s best shopping street for visitors: about half a mile of 12th Avenue South, roughly 3 miles south of downtown, lined with independent boutiques, coffee shops, bakeries and restaurants in low brick buildings and converted houses. It’s walkable end to end, the shops are small enough to browse quickly, and the mix leans toward things you’d actually wear or give as a gift rather than things with a guitar printed on them.

The names the city’s tourism office points visitors to include Imogene + Willie, the denim brand known for made-to-fit jeans; Draper James, Reese Witherspoon’s line of updated Southern clothing; Emerson Grace, a women’s boutique; and Serendipity, Finnley’s and Moda. Expect boutique prices: this is where you buy one good thing, not a bag of souvenirs.

Weekends are crowded, especially late morning, when brunch lines spill onto the sidewalk and street parking disappears. Arrive by 10am, or come on a weekday afternoon. From downtown it’s a 10 to 15 minute rideshare, which beats circling for a space. For what else is nearby, including the parks and restaurants, see our guide to Nashville neighborhoods.

2. Lower Broadway and downtown

Downtown is where most visitors do their shopping, because it’s where they already are. Lower Broadway, the five blocks of honky-tonks between the river and the Ryman, is lined with boot stores, hat shops and souvenir counters that stay open late to catch the crowds coming out of the bars. Shopping here is fun, fast and more expensive than it needs to be.

Start with boots, since that’s what most people come for. Boot Barn’s Broadway store at 318 Broadway opens 10am to 9pm Monday to Wednesday, 9am to 10pm Thursday to Saturday and 10am to 8pm on Sundays, and the chain lists a second downtown store on 2nd Avenue. It carries the major western brands at standard retail prices, which makes it a useful benchmark before you walk into anything else.

Then there are the “buy one pair, get two free” signs, a Broadway fixture for years. The math is simple: in practice the price of the first pair has to cover all three, so each pair costs about a third of the sticker price. That’s a deal only if you genuinely want three pairs of that quality. If you want one good pair, compare the sticker on pair number one with the same style elsewhere. The free pairs, notably, aren’t free.

Hats are the other Broadway staple. Custom hat shops, where a stylist steams and shapes a felt or straw hat and you add a band, pins and feathers, have become a bachelorette-weekend ritual, and prices swing widely with the quality of the felt. Ask what the hat is made of before the shaping starts. Our Nashville bachelorette party guide covers how groups fit boots and hats into the weekend.

For better souvenirs, walk a few blocks south into SoBro. Hatch Show Print, the 1879 letterpress shop now inside the Country Music Hall of Fame building, sells posters printed on its own presses, and its gallery is free. The museum stores at the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Johnny Cash Museum are better than most gift shops. Goo Goo Chocolate Co. in SoBro sells the Goo Goo Cluster, the chocolate, caramel, marshmallow and peanut candy invented in Nashville in 1912, in more flavors than you knew existed.

A few blocks north of Broadway, the Arcade is downtown’s oddest and most charming shopping space: a two-level, glass-roofed passage built in the early 1900s between Fourth and Fifth Avenues North, with lunch counters on the ground floor and art galleries upstairs. It comes alive on the first Saturday of each month for the free First Saturday Art Crawl, 6pm to 9pm, when the galleries open late and the crowd drifts between them. Buying art from a local gallery is the least touristy souvenir downtown offers.

Parking downtown is expensive by Nashville standards: Metro-owned garages cap at $3 to $20 for the day, and meters run $2 to $6 an hour with time limits. If you’re staying downtown, walk. Our guide to Nashville’s honky-tonks covers the bars you’ll be shopping between.

3. East Nashville

East Nashville, across the Cumberland River from downtown, is where the city’s musicians, artists and cooks moved when downtown got expensive, and its shops reflect that: vintage clothing, records, local makers and small galleries, scattered through a neighborhood of bungalows and corner commercial strips. It’s less a single shopping street than a few clusters, with Five Points the liveliest.

The essential stop is Grimey’s New & Preloved Music at 1060 East Trinity Lane, one of the country’s best-loved independent record stores, with new releases, a deep used section and the kind of staff recommendations an algorithm can’t match. It opens 11am to 6pm Monday to Thursday, 11am to 7pm on Friday and Saturday, and noon to 5pm on Sunday. Note that East Trinity Lane is north of the Five Points area, so plan it as its own stop.

Vintage is East Nashville’s other draw, with shops around Five Points and along the main corridors that reward slow browsing. Inventory changes weekly and hours can be short early in the week, so check before you drive over on a Monday. Pair the afternoon with dinner; East Nashville’s restaurants are one of the strongest reasons to cross the river.

Five Points, where Woodland Street meets North 11th Street, is the easiest place to start: a compact knot of bars, restaurants and shops about 10 minutes from downtown, with street parking on the side streets. Parts of the neighborhood were rebuilt after the tornado of March 2020, and the mix of old storefronts and new buildings shows it. Give yourself time to wander the side streets rather than driving from shop to shop; the best finds in East Nashville tend to be the places you didn’t plan on.

4. The Gulch and 7th Avenue South

The Gulch, the former rail yard between downtown and Midtown, is the city’s polished new district: apartment towers over street-level boutiques and restaurants, all walkable from Broadway in 15 to 20 minutes. The tourism office pitches it for trendy restaurants, chic boutiques and walkability, and that’s a fair summary. It’s an hour’s browse, best combined with lunch or a show at a nearby venue.

A few blocks away at 627 7th Avenue South, Third Man Records, the label and store founded by Jack White, is a destination for music fans whether or not they own a turntable. The shop sells the label’s own pressings, novelty records and merchandise, and opens every day from 11am to 6pm. Its vintage Voice-o-Graph booth cuts a short recording straight to vinyl, which makes a better souvenir than anything with a rhinestone on it.

Parking in the Gulch is in paid garages, so walk from downtown if you can. Wear comfortable shoes: the walk is short, but the sidewalks are long on construction.

5. Green Hills

Green Hills, about 15 to 20 minutes southwest of downtown on Hillsboro Pike, is where Nashville goes for luxury and department stores. The Mall at Green Hills is anchored by Dillard’s, Macy’s and Nordstrom, with stores including Tiffany & Co., Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Tory Burch, Sephora and Apple. If you’re looking for a specific luxury brand, this is the first place in town to look, and it’s pleasant, bright and calm on a weekday morning.

Nearby independent shops include White’s Mercantile, the general store founded by singer-songwriter Holly Williams, which sells the kind of well-made home goods and gifts that justify a detour. The real cost of Green Hills is traffic: Hillsboro Pike backs up badly at rush hour and on weekend afternoons, so go early or late. Our guide to getting around Nashville explains when the roads are at their worst.

6. Opry Mills

Opry Mills is Nashville’s biggest shopping center: a Simon mall at 433 Opry Mills Drive with more than 200 stores, next to the Gaylord Opryland Resort and the Grand Ole Opry House, about 15 to 20 minutes from downtown. The mix is outlets and big brands: Nike Factory Store, Columbia Factory Store, Polo Ralph Lauren, Coach, Tory Burch, Sephora, H&M, T.J. Maxx and TUMI among them, plus The Nashville Store’s souvenir shops. It opens 10am to 8pm Monday to Saturday and 11am to 7pm on Sunday.

It’s a good choice in three situations: you’re staying at Gaylord Opryland or seeing a show at the Opry, it’s raining or 95°F, or you’re shopping for family members who want specific brands. It’s a poor choice if you want anything that feels like Nashville. The 2010 Cumberland River flood put the mall under water and closed it until 2012, which is why the building feels newer than its 2000 opening date suggests.

Make the most of the trip by pairing it with the Gaylord Opryland Resort next door, whose nine acres of indoor gardens, with paths, a river and waterfalls, are free to walk. In November and December, the resort’s A Country Christmas season (November 6, 2026 to January 2, 2027) adds holiday traffic and crowds to the whole area, so weekday mornings are best.

7. Tanger Outlets Nashville

Tanger Outlets Nashville, in Antioch off I-24 southeast of downtown, is the newer and smaller of the city’s two outlet centers: 60 stores in seven open-air buildings, with a posted 9pm close, an hour later than Opry Mills on a Saturday. Tenants include Old Navy Outlet, Express Factory Outlet, Fragrance Outlet, Simply Southern and Run It Back, and the selection leans toward mainstream fashion and footwear rather than luxury.

It’s 20 to 25 minutes from downtown without traffic, and I-24 has plenty of traffic. Go on a weekday, outside rush hour, and check Tanger’s site for coupons before you leave. If you’re choosing between the two outlet centers, the comparison table further down will settle it.

8. Germantown and the Nashville Farmers’ Market

Germantown, just north of downtown, is a historic neighborhood of restored brick houses that’s better known for restaurants than for shopping, and that’s fine: the Nashville Farmers’ Market at 900 Rosa L. Parks Boulevard, on its edge, is one of the most enjoyable places to shop in the city. It has open-air sheds of farm stands, a 24,000-square-foot garden center, an international food hall with more than 20 restaurants and a row of artisan shops.

Come hungry, buy lunch in the food hall, then browse the stands for local honey, preserves and seasonal produce to take home if your luggage allows. The market sits beside Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, so it’s easy to combine with a walk. For the neighborhood’s restaurants, see our guide to where to eat in Nashville.

9. Hillsboro Village

Hillsboro Village is a few compact blocks of 21st Avenue South between Vanderbilt and Belmont universities, with independent shops, cafés, the Pancake Pantry and the Belcourt Theatre, a nonprofit art-house cinema at 2102 Belcourt Avenue. It’s a small district, an hour at most, but it has a college-town looseness that the newer districts lack. Combine it with 12South, a short drive south, or with a walk through Centennial Park nearby. Because two universities sit on either side, the shops and cafés skew younger and cheaper than 12South’s, and a weekday afternoon here is as close as Nashville gets to an old-fashioned college main street.

10. Marathon Village

Marathon Village fills the brick factory buildings of the former Marathon Motor Works, which built cars here from 1907 to 1914, the first automobile manufacturer in the South. Since the late 1980s the buildings have filled with shops, studios, a distillery and event spaces, and the original Marathon cars on display cost nothing to see. Corsair Distillery’s taproom is here, along with a mix of western wear, gifts and local makers. It’s a quirky hour rather than a full afternoon, and our Nashville neighborhoods guide covers it alongside the rest of the area.

Opry Mills or Tanger Outlets: which outlet trip is worth it?

Nashville has two outlet-style centers on opposite sides of the city, and neither is close to downtown. Here’s how they compare for a visitor.

	Opry Mills	Tanger Outlets Nashville
Location	433 Opry Mills Dr, by Gaylord Opryland and the Opry	Antioch, off I-24 southeast of downtown
Stores	200+, outlets and full-price brands	60 outlets in seven buildings
Hours	10am to 8pm Mon to Sat, 11am to 7pm Sun	Posted close 9pm
Indoors?	Yes, fully enclosed	Open-air walkways
Best for	Rainy or hot days, families, pairing with the Opry	A focused outlet run on the way to or from the airport side of town

Our verdict: if you’re going to the Opry or staying at Gaylord Opryland, Opry Mills is an easy add-on and the better all-weather bet. If you just want outlet prices and you’re driving anyway, Tanger is smaller, calmer and open later. Neither is worth a special trip for a short visit when 12South and downtown are closer and more interesting.

What to buy in Nashville, and where

Cowboy boots: start at Boot Barn on Broadway to learn the prices, then decide whether a specialist or a three-pair deal makes sense. Try boots on later in the day, when your feet have swollen a little, and expect real leather boots to feel snug across the instep at first.

Hats: a shaped felt or straw hat from a downtown hat shop is the classic bachelorette souvenir; ask about the felt before the steaming starts, and budget for the extras, which add up.

Records: Third Man Records for the label’s own pressings and the Voice-o-Graph booth, Grimey’s for depth and staff picks. Both are worth a visit even if you only buy a T-shirt.

Guitars: Gruhn Guitars, the vintage instrument dealer the tourism office lists among Nashville’s signature businesses, is a museum you can shop in. Even if you’re not buying, the walls of old Martins and Gibsons are worth seeing.

Posters: Hatch Show Print’s letterpress posters, printed in the shop, frame beautifully and roll up for the flight home.

Denim and western shirts: Imogene + Willie in 12South for jeans fitted to you, and the western-wear racks downtown for pearl-snap shirts. A good shirt gets more wear at home than a novelty hat, and it packs flat.

Home goods and gifts: White’s Mercantile, the general store founded by Holly Williams, and the 12South boutiques are the places for candles, kitchen goods, books and the kind of gift that doesn’t announce where it came from.

Food: Goo Goo Clusters from Goo Goo Chocolate Co., local honey and preserves from the Farmers’ Market, and, if you’re driving, a bottle from one of the region’s distilleries. Our guide to Nashville distilleries lists the shops and tasting rooms.

Art: a print or small piece from a downtown gallery on First Saturday, or from the WeHo Art Crawl in Wedgewood-Houston, which runs the same night, also free.

Bargains: the Nashville Flea Market at the Fairgrounds on the fourth weekend of each month (the third weekend in December), with free admission and hundreds of dealers selling antiques, furniture, vintage and plain junk. Get there early for the best finds. It’s one of the free things we recommend in our list of free things to do in Nashville.

When to shop: hours, crowds and timing

Shop hours in Nashville split along a simple line. Downtown stores keep bar hours, with Boot Barn on Broadway open until 10pm Thursday to Saturday, because their customers are on Broadway at night. Neighborhood shops keep daytime hours, often closing at 5pm or 6pm and opening late on Sundays, so the record stores and boutiques belong in your afternoon, not your evening. The malls sit in between.

Crowds follow the tourist calendar. Weekends in 12South and on Broadway are busiest from late morning to late afternoon; weekday mornings are calm everywhere. Big event weekends, such as CMA Fest in June, football weekends and the holiday season around Gaylord Opryland, fill parking and stores alike. For the full calendar of busy and quiet weeks, see our guide to the best time to visit Nashville.

If you’re timing a trip around shopping, the tax-free weekend at the end of July is the one date that changes prices, but it’s also peak summer heat, so you’ll spend the savings on iced coffee.

Getting between Nashville’s shopping districts

Only downtown, SoBro and the Gulch are walkable from most hotels. Everything else is a drive: 10 to 15 minutes to 12South or East Nashville, 15 to 20 to Green Hills or Opry Mills, 20 to 25 to Tanger in Antioch. Rideshares are the easiest way to hop between two districts in an afternoon, because parking in 12South and East Nashville is street parking that fills on weekends, and downtown garages are expensive. If you have a car, plan one district per outing and park once.

A one-day Nashville shopping route

If shopping is the point of a day, this route covers the best of it with one rideshare and a lot of walking. It front-loads the neighborhood boutiques, which close early, and saves Broadway’s late-opening boot stores for the evening.

Time	Stop	Notes
10:00am	12South	Boutiques before the brunch crowd; take a rideshare rather than hunting for parking
12:30pm	Lunch in 12South or Hillsboro Village	Hillsboro Village is a short ride north if 12South’s lines are long
2:00pm	Third Man Records and the Gulch	Open 11am to 6pm daily; try the Voice-o-Graph booth
3:30pm	SoBro: Hatch Show Print and Goo Goo Chocolate Co.	Posters and candy, with the Hall of Fame’s museum store next door
5:00pm	Back to the hotel	Drop the bags before the evening; nobody wants to carry a poster tube into a honky-tonk
9:00pm	Boot Barn on Broadway	Open until 10pm Thursday to Saturday; try boots on between sets

On a second day, swap in East Nashville for Grimey’s and vintage, or Opry Mills if the weather turns. Our Nashville itinerary shows how to fit a shopping afternoon around the music and the food.

Is shopping in Nashville expensive?

It depends entirely on where you do it. Downtown prices reflect downtown rents and the crowds that pay them: boots, hats and T-shirts on Lower Broadway cost more than the same items at a suburban store, and the boot deals are built to look better than they are. The neighborhood boutiques charge boutique prices, but you’re paying for independent design and local makers, and the quality usually justifies it. The outlets at Opry Mills and Tanger are where national brands get cheaper, and the malls charge what malls charge everywhere.

The bigger surprise for visitors is the tax. At 9.75%, Davidson County’s sales tax adds nearly a tenth to everything, and Tennessee’s combined rates are among the highest in the country. Build it into your budget from the start: a $100 shopping afternoon is really $109.75.

Three ways to spend less. Set a boot budget before you walk into the first store on Broadway, and compare at least two shops. Buy souvenirs that are made here, such as Hatch posters, local records and Goo Goo Clusters, rather than imported trinkets with “Nashville” printed on them; they cost about the same and mean more. And if your dates are flexible, the late-July tax holiday takes the 9.75% off clothing under $100 per item.

Shopping on a rainy or scorching day

Nashville’s weather pushes a lot of shopping indoors. July averages a 91°F high, and spring brings heavy storms, so it helps to know which options keep you dry and cool. Opry Mills is fully enclosed, with more than 200 stores under one roof, and the Gaylord Opryland Resort’s free indoor gardens are next door. The Mall at Green Hills is enclosed too. Downtown, the Arcade’s glass roof covers its shops and galleries, the museum stores at the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Johnny Cash Museum are a few blocks apart, and the Nashville Farmers’ Market’s food hall makes a dry lunch stop.

What doesn’t work in bad weather: 12South and East Nashville, where the shopping happens on sidewalks between small stores, and Tanger Outlets, whose walkways are open to the sky. Save those for a clear morning.

Shopping for a group or bachelorette weekend

Groups shop differently. The common pattern on a Nashville girls’ trip or bachelorette weekend is matching boots or hats on day one, so the photos look right for the rest of the trip. If that’s your plan, shop on Thursday or Friday afternoon, before Broadway’s weekend crowds arrive, and ask the hat shops whether they take group bookings, since shaping a dozen hats one at a time takes a while. Agree on a budget for the group before anyone falls in love with a $400 pair of boots.

For everything else, from where to stay to which bars welcome big groups, the bachelorette guide linked above covers the logistics, and Broadway’s boot stores stay open late enough to fix a forgotten pair on the night itself.

Getting your purchases home

Nashville shopping creates one specific problem: boots. They’re bulky, heavy and a pain to pack, so the usual traveler’s trick is to wear the new pair on the flight home and pack the old shoes. If you’re buying more than one pair, ask the store whether it ships; many Nashville shops will, and a shipping store is a fallback.

A few other rules of thumb. Records warp in heat, so don’t leave vinyl in a parked car in summer, and carry LPs on the plane flat in a tote rather than checking them. Hot sauce, honey and other liquids over 3.4 ounces have to go in checked luggage, and unopened bottles of whiskey can travel in checked bags within the airline limits on alcohol. Hatch posters travel best rolled in a tube. And give yourself extra time at the airport: Nashville International is in the middle of a construction program that runs through December 2027.

Finally, check your airline’s checked-bag weight limit before the last shopping stop. A pair of boots, a stack of records and a bottle of bourbon can push a suitcase over 50 pounds faster than you’d think, and overweight fees cost more than shipping.

Where to stay for a shopping trip

Your hotel decides how much of this you can do on foot. Downtown and SoBro put Broadway’s boot stores, Hatch Show Print, Goo Goo, the Arcade and Third Man Records within walking distance, which suits a short trip built around souvenirs and nightlife. Midtown, West End and the hotels near Vanderbilt are closer to Hillsboro Village, 12South and Green Hills, a better base for boutique and mall shopping. East Nashville has fewer hotels but puts you near the vintage shops and record stores. If Opry Mills is the plan, Gaylord Opryland is next door, though its resort fee ($28 a night plus tax) and self-parking ($37 a night plus tax) add up. Our guide to where to stay in Nashville compares the areas in detail.

Shopping in Nashville FAQ

What is the best area for shopping in Nashville?

For visitors, 12South is the best shopping street: about half a mile of independent boutiques, coffee shops and restaurants on 12th Avenue South, 10 to 15 minutes from downtown. For boots and souvenirs, Lower Broadway is the place, and for luxury brands, the Mall at Green Hills. Opry Mills and Tanger Outlets handle outlet shopping.

Where should I buy cowboy boots in Nashville?

Start on Lower Broadway, where Boot Barn at 318 Broadway carries the major western brands at standard retail prices and stays open until 10pm Thursday to Saturday. Use it as a price benchmark before you consider the “buy one, get two free” shops nearby, and try boots on later in the day for the best fit.

Is the buy one, get two free boot deal on Broadway worth it?

Only if you want three pairs. The first pair’s price covers all three, so each pair costs about a third of the sticker price. If you want just one good pair, compare that first price with the same style at a standard retailer, where one pair usually costs less than the “deal” total. The free pairs aren’t really free.

What is the sales tax on shopping in Nashville?

Davidson County’s combined sales tax is 9.75%: Tennessee’s 7% state rate plus 2.75% local, including a half-cent transit surcharge added on February 1, 2025. That adds $24.38 to a $250 pair of boots. Tennessee offers no refund to international visitors, and cocktails, wine and spirits at bars pay a combined 24.75%.

Does Tennessee have a tax-free shopping weekend?

Yes. Tennessee’s sales tax holiday starts on the last Friday of July and runs through Sunday. In 2026 it ran July 31 to August 2, when clothing and school supplies priced at $100 or less per item were tax-free, including online purchases. Accessories and sports equipment didn’t qualify, and items over $100 stayed fully taxed.

Which is better, Opry Mills or Tanger Outlets?

Opry Mills is bigger, with more than 200 stores, and fully enclosed, which makes it better for hot or rainy days and easy to pair with the Opry or Gaylord Opryland. Tanger Outlets in Antioch is smaller, with 60 open-air stores, and open later, with a posted 9pm close. Neither beats 12South or downtown for Nashville character.

What are the best record stores in Nashville?

Third Man Records at 627 7th Avenue South, Jack White’s label store, is open 11am to 6pm daily and has a Voice-o-Graph booth that cuts recordings to vinyl. Grimey’s New & Preloved Music at 1060 East Trinity Lane has the deepest stock of new and used records, open until 7pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

Related Nashville Guides

• Nashville Neighborhoods: what 12South, East Nashville, Germantown and the Gulch are like beyond the shops
• Country Music Hall of Fame and Music Museums: museum stores, Hatch Show Print and the music sights downtown
• Nashville Bachelorette Party: boots, hats and how groups plan the weekend
• Getting Around Nashville: rideshares, parking and transit between districts
• Free Things to Do in Nashville: the flea market, art crawls and other free browsing

Sources and verification

Store hours, addresses, tax rates and the tax-holiday dates in this guide were checked on October 3, 2026 against the stores, malls and agencies listed below; the guide is based on that research and does not claim first-hand visits.

• Tennessee Department of Revenue: 2026 sales tax holiday
• Tennessee Department of Revenue: sales and use tax
• Opry Mills: hours and stores
• Tanger Outlets Nashville: visitor information
• Visit Music City: shopping in Nashville
• Visit Music City: Green Hills
• Visit Music City: neighborhood directory
• Third Man Records: Nashville store
• Grimey’s New & Preloved Music: contact and hours
• Boot Barn: Broadway store
• Nashville Downtown Partnership: downtown districts
• Nashville Downtown Partnership: parking garages
• Nashville Farmers’ Market

Photo credits

• Boot shop window on Lower Broadway: photo by FaceMePLS from The Hague, The Netherlands, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
• Hatch Show Print interior: photo by Jeremy Thompson, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
• The Arcade, downtown Nashville (2010): photo by Smallbones, Wikimedia Commons (public domain)
• Third Man Records building (2010): photo by Sean Russell from Knoxville, TN, USA, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)
• The Gulch: photo by Brichar60, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
• Opry Mills entrance (2009): photo by Ichabod, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
• Hillsboro Village: photo by EVula, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)
• The Mall at Green Hills (featured image): photo by TenPoundHammer, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Photos are from Wikimedia Commons and have been resized for the web. The chart is our own, drawn from the figures in this guide.