Knoxville is a city of about 195,000 people on the Tennessee River in the eastern end of the state, and the gold sphere on a tower in the first image is the reason most people recognise it without knowing why. The SUNSPHERE was built for the 1982 World's Fair, the fair lost money and was widely written off, and the sphere stayed. It is now free to go up, which is the best cheap view in the city.
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What Is Here
MARKET SQUARE IS WHERE THE CITY ACTUALLY HAPPENS. The third image is a street beside it. The square is a pedestrianised block of restaurants, bars and a farmers' market, laid out in the 1850s, and the surrounding Gay Street and Old City blocks have filled in around it over the past twenty years. For a city this size the downtown is unusually alive in the evening, which is the main argument for coming at all.
THE URBAN WILDERNESS IS THE THING NOBODY EXPECTS. Knoxville has built more than 50 miles of connected trail through forest, old quarries and reclaimed land INSIDE the city limits, a few minutes from downtown, with mountain biking, swimming quarries and a genuinely wild feel. It is one of the better pieces of American municipal planning of the last twenty years and it is barely known outside Tennessee.
THE SECOND IMAGE IS A GIANT BASKETBALL AND IT IS A MUSEUM. The Women's Basketball Hall of Fame sits downtown behind the world's largest basketball, and whatever your interest in the sport, it is worth knowing that this city is where the women's game has its institutional home, in substantial part because of the University of Tennessee's own history under Pat Summitt. The university is the other force here: around 36,000 students, and NEYLAND STADIUM holds over 100,000 people. On a home football Saturday the hotel rates double or triple and the roads become immovable, so check the fixture list before booking, exactly as you would for Columbus.
THE RIVER AND THE GREENWAYS. The Tennessee River runs through the south of the downtown with a long riverfront greenway, Volunteer Landing, and boat hire. Ijams Nature Center on the south bank is the gateway to the Urban Wilderness and is where most visitors should start.
AND THE MOUNTAINS ARE AN HOUR AWAY AND ARE NOT THIS POST. The GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS, the most visited national park in the United States, begin about an hour south east, and Knoxville is the nearest city with an airport and a choice of hotels. That is a genuine reason to be here. It is also a separate destination with its own permits, road closures and conditions, and this library covers it in its own post rather than folding it into a city one.
When to Go
April, May, September and October are the best of it, warm without the summer humidity, with dogwood and redbud in spring and good colour in the hills in late October.
June to August is hot and humid, often above 30 degrees with afternoon thunderstorms, and the Urban Wilderness is noticeably harder work in it.
Autumn is also leaf season in the Smokies, which means the roads toward the park and the hotels in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge fill completely at weekends in October.
December to February is mild by northern standards, in the high single figures to low teens, with occasional snow and ice that the city handles poorly because it gets so little practice.
Getting There
McGhee Tyson Airport is about twenty minutes south with reasonable domestic connections. By road, Nashville is about three hours west, Atlanta three and a half south, Asheville an hour and three quarters east.
There is no passenger rail. Knoxville is another sizeable American city with no Amtrak service, so it is fly or drive.
Downtown is walkable and the rest is not. The free trolley covers the centre and the university strip, and you want a car for Ijams, the Urban Wilderness trailheads and anything toward the mountains.
The Knoxville Packing List
Humid summers, mild wet winters, afternoon storms and a lot of trail walking close to the city.
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women suits this city for the reason most southern American cities do: the gap between outside and inside. You go from 32 degrees and heavy humidity into fiercely air-conditioned restaurants and museums several times a day, and wool handles the damp-then-cold cycle where cotton makes it worse. From November to March add a heavyweight merino base layer.
A Columbia Fast Trek II fleece for the cooler half of the year, and a Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket, because this is a wet part of the country: east Tennessee gets substantial rainfall year round and the Smokies more again.
Walking shoes with grip, and here they are doing real work rather than city duty: the Urban Wilderness trails are rooty, rocky and often muddy, and the quarry edges are slick.
An insulated water bottle, since the trail network has very little in the way of facilities once you are into it.
Insect repellent from April to October, for ticks as much as mosquitoes, which is covered below.
Not linked and worth packing: SOMETHING WITH SLEEVES for the air conditioning; A FOLDING UMBRELLA, which earns its place in any season here; AND LONG TROUSERS FOR TRAIL WALKING, which is the single most effective tick measure there is.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women in Knoxville
Emergency numbers: 911 for police, ambulance and fire, free from any phone including a locked mobile. Calls are answered locally and dispatchers will stay on the line. For non-urgent police matters many cities also run a 311 information line.
TICKS ARE THE MOST LIKELY THING TO FOLLOW YOU HOME FROM HERE AND ALMOST NO CITY GUIDE MENTIONS THEM. East Tennessee is one of the higher-incidence areas in the United States for ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPOTTED FEVER, which despite the name is a southeastern disease, along with ehrlichiosis and the Lone Star tick's associated alpha-gal allergy. The Urban Wilderness is woodland and long grass a few minutes from downtown, which is exactly the habitat. The measures are dull and they work: repellent on skin, long trousers tucked into socks on trail, stay to the middle of paths, and CHECK YOURSELF THOROUGHLY AFTERWARDS, because prompt removal matters more than anything else. A spreading rash or a fever in the days after a bite is a reason to see a doctor and to say where you have been. SEVERE STORMS AND TORNADOES reach this part of Tennessee, mostly in spring, and the vocabulary decides your response: a WATCH means conditions are favourable, a WARNING means take shelter immediately on the lowest floor away from windows. The National Park Service for the Great Smoky Mountains is the authority for conditions, road closures and the parking tag requirement if you go that way, and the park closes roads for ice and fire with little notice. FLASH FLOODING is a real risk on this terrain and the standing American rule applies: never drive into water of unknown depth. ON CRIME, Knoxville is an ordinary American city of its size, with a downtown and university strip that are busy and well lit and a wide gap in quality between districts a few blocks apart, so use a ride app at night rather than walking between them. The university bar strip on a weekend is a student drinking environment.
The FCDO publishes no advised-against areas anywhere in the United States and no country-level warning. Its guidance concentrates on the practical differences a British visitor meets: entry requirements and ESTA, the cost of healthcare without insurance, extreme weather including hurricanes on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts between June and November, and wildfire and heat risk in the west and south-west.US State Department travel advisory: there is none, and this is not an omission. The State Department issues travel advisories for other countries, not for the United States itself, so no US advisory for this destination exists to link. In its place, the Government of Canada advice for the United States gives an equivalent third-country assessment.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/usa, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits. The FCDO names no advised-against areas anywhere in the United States. The same advice also covers Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands.
Main hospital: The University of Tennessee Medical Center is the region's academic hospital and trauma centre, with Fort Sanders Regional also central, both with full emergency departments. Dial 911 for police, ambulance and fire, free from any phone including one with no service plan. This is the single biggest practical difference for a visitor: there is no public health system, an emergency room visit without insurance can run into thousands of dollars, and an ambulance is billed separately and is not free. Comprehensive travel insurance with a high medical limit is not optional in the United States, and you should carry your policy number and the insurer's 24 hour number somewhere you can reach them. Urgent care clinics handle anything short of an emergency far more cheaply and quickly than an emergency room, and are the right choice for a sprain, an infection or stitches.
Official health authority: the CDC travellers' health pages, the US federal health authority for visitors. covers the national health travel information for visitors
Embassy contact: the United States is the host country, so there is no US embassy to contact. Your own country's embassy is in Washington DC, with consulates in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Miami and Boston. Find yours before you travel and save the number.
Official tourism authority: Brand USA, the national tourism marketing body. covers Tennessee, and the city visitor office publishes the University of Tennessee football schedule and the Urban Wilderness trail maps, the first of which decides hotel prices in autumn
Takeaways
The Sunsphere is free to go up. Best cheap view in the city.
Fifty miles of trail inside the city limits. Start at Ijams.
Check the Tennessee football schedule before you book a hotel.
Check for ticks after any trail walk. This is a high-incidence area.
Solo women safety assessment: Knoxville is an easy and cheap American city to travel alone in, and better than its size would suggest, because the downtown is genuinely busy in the evening rather than emptying at six. Market Square, Gay Street and the Old City are well lit and populated, eating alone is completely ordinary, and the free trolley covers the centre. It is an American city of nearly 200,000 people, so the usual judgement applies: the quality of the streets changes quickly a few blocks out from the centre, so use a ride app rather than walking between districts after dark, and treat the university bar strip on a weekend night as the student drinking environment it is. THE REAL RISKS ARE OUTDOORS. Ticks are the one to take seriously here: east Tennessee has a high incidence of Rocky Mountain spotted fever and other tick-borne illness, the Urban Wilderness is precisely the habitat, and the answer is repellent, long trousers on trail and a thorough check afterwards, with a fever or spreading rash in the following days being a reason to see a doctor and say where you have been. Spring brings severe storms and tornadoes, where a watch means stay aware and a warning means shelter now. Flash flooding on this terrain means never driving into standing water. If you go on to the Smokies, that park sets its own road closures and parking requirements and is a separate trip rather than an afternoon. 911 REACHES POLICE, AMBULANCE AND FIRE from any phone, and the university medical center is the regional trauma centre.
Reading On
Knoxville is the city at the Smokies' door, and the Great Smoky Mountains packing list covers the park itself an hour south east, with the permits, the road closures and the conditions that a city post should not pretend to cover. Across Tennessee, the Nashville packing list covers the music city three hours west and the Memphis packing list the Mississippi one further on. In the same mountains and valleys, the Asheville packing list covers the North Carolina town on the other side of the range, the Louisville packing list the Kentucky city north, and the Charlotte packing list the Carolina one east. For the country, the USA travel guide for women carries the states, the transport and the seasons in full. For why wool suits heavy humidity and hard air conditioning in the same hour, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
