A young fox prowling an empty lot with the city glowing behind it. A life-size replica of the Parthenon lit up at twilight. Skateboarders catching air on a pedestrian bridge while their friends film for social media. A new photo roundup from Smithsonian Magazine pulls 15 prize-adjacent images from its long-running photo contest archives to show Nashville from angles the average bachelorette party never sees.

The collection leans on the city's obvious charms — Broadway packed with cowboy hats on the Fourth of July, live music spilling out of honky-tonks, a layered long-exposure shot of downtown nightlife — but it's the quieter frames that say the most about Tennessee's capital. There's a woman in North Nashville carrying her groceries more than a mile without once looking up. A vintage car cruising past the Parthenon replica, which was built for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition back in 1897 and still stands as a full-scale nod to classical Athens. A guitarist named Billy Crain posing in front of a flag mural by a local fire hall. Even the infrastructure gets its moment: both the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge and the Korean War Veterans Memorial Bridge appear more than once, shot at golden hour with the Cumberland River reflecting underneath.

What the series makes clear is that Nashville rewards walking. The best of these photos come from the bridges, the riverfront and the streets just off Broadway — places you can cover in an afternoon on foot. Photographers in the feature talk about returning to the same lot for days to get one shot of the fox, which is a decent metaphor for the city itself: the famous strip is loud and immediate, but the good stuff takes a little patience.

For travellers, this is a useful nudge past the clichés. Yes, see the Grand Ole Opry and hear live music on Broadway — it's genuinely part of the experience. But pair it with the Parthenon in Centennial Park, a sunset crossing of the Seigenthaler Bridge, and a slow wander through neighbourhoods like East Nashville where the pace drops and the food gets more interesting. If you want to shoot the city well, aim your camera at the skyline from the east bank of the Cumberland around dusk; several of these photos prove that's the money hour.

The full gallery is worth a scroll before you book anything — it works as a mood board for a trip that balances neon and quiet.