Elvis, the blues, soul and a Mississippi River bridge walk, planned around the closing days and the ticket tiers.
Photo: Ceptember, CC BY-SA 4.0
Memphis is where a lot of American music was pressed, and it is not shy about it. Sun Studio cut Elvis, Johnny Cash and what many call the first rock and roll single, Stax made Southern soul in a converted movie theater, and Beale Street is where the blues went from the cotton fields to the city. The city was founded in 1819 on a bluff above the Mississippi. It is also the place where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed in 1968, and the museum built around that motel is the most important stop in town.
The city is not polished and doesn't try to be. Downtown is compact and walkable, but Graceland is nine miles south, Stax is in a neighborhood that took decades to recover, and a rental car or a ride app matters more than in most Southern cities. Three days is the right length: it fits Graceland properly (it takes half a day if you buy the full ticket), the two museums that matter most, the barbecue joints and a river walk, without the filler. A fourth day buys you the Mississippi Delta.
Day one is the Elvis day, with Graceland in the morning and Stax in the afternoon. Day two is downtown history and music: the Civil Rights Museum, Sun Studio, the Peabody ducks and Beale Street. Day three is the river and the ribs. We recommend starting on a Wednesday, because the Civil Rights Museum is closed Tuesdays, Stax is closed Mondays, and Cozy Corner and the Rendezvous list no Sunday or Monday hours. For more on the country, see our United States page.
Every stop from the plan below, colored by day. Pick a day to see its route.
Elvis in the morning at Graceland, Southern soul at Stax in the afternoon and a plate of ribs before the joint closes.
The Lorraine Motel in the morning, fried chicken, the room where rock and roll started, the Peabody ducks and an honest night on Beale.
A walk across the Mississippi on Big River Crossing, the riverfront park, a barbecue lunch and a final dinner at the Rendezvous.
Today is a car day. Graceland is nine miles from downtown, Stax is about 15 minutes north of it, and Cozy Corner closes at 8pm. Book a morning Graceland slot online and leave by 1:30 to reach Stax before its 4pm last entry.
Elvis and his family are buried in the Meditation Garden behind the mansion, and every morning Graceland lets people walk up and see it for free. Enter the gates between 7:30 and 8:30 and be off the grounds before paid tours begin. There are no walk-ups on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day.
It is a good quiet start even if you have a 9am ticket, because the grave is also on the paid tour and is much busier then. Bring a Sharpie, as Graceland suggests: fans sign the famous Graceland wall.
Elvis was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and the family moved to Memphis in 1948, when he was 13. He window-shopped the loud clothes on Beale Street, walked into Sun Studio in 1953, and in November 1955 Sun sold his contract to RCA for 40,000 USD. Fans and reporters soon camped outside the house on Audubon Drive he had bought in 1956, so he gave his parents a 100,000 USD budget to find a farmhouse with room around it. On March 19, 1957 he bought Graceland, a 1939 Colonial Revival house several miles south of the city, for 102,500 USD. He was 22. He died there on August 16, 1977, aged 42, and was first buried at Forest Hill Cemetery; after an attempt to steal the body, he and his mother were moved to the Meditation Garden on October 2. Upkeep ran about 500,000 USD a year and the family faced selling, until Priscilla Presley opened the house to the public on June 7, 1982. It now draws around 600,000 visitors a year.
The mansion tour is a self-guided iPad audio tour of 1 to 1.5 hours, hosted by John Stamos with commentary by Elvis and Lisa Marie, in nine languages. A shuttle runs between the ticket pavilion and the house. It is smaller than you expect. The Jungle Room, with its indoor waterfall, is where he recorded most of his last two albums, and the second floor, which includes the bathroom where he died, is closed out of respect for the family. Still photos are fine, flash and video are not. The tone is affectionate, not critical: the drug use that contributed to his death gets little space, and the story of a white singer rising on Black music is told more openly at Sun and Stax.
What the tickets get you: Elvis Presley's Memphis + Planes (53 USD) is the exhibits and both jets, with no house. The Elvis Experience (85 USD) adds the mansion, and is all most people need. Entourage VIP (148 USD) is the same self-guided tour with front-of-the-line mansion access and a private exhibit, worth it only on a crowded day when time is tight. Ultimate VIP (215-240 USD) swaps the audio tour for a live guide, with an artifact show and tell and a photo, and tours before 1:30pm include a meal voucher. The Archives UVIP (235-260 USD) adds an archives tour and a Q&A with archivists. AAA members, military, ages 65+ and youth 5-10 get discounts.
Across Elvis Presley Boulevard is the complex Graceland calls Elvis Presley's Memphis: the car museum, the career museum with jumpsuits and gold records, and two jets. The big one is a 1958 Convair 880 named Lisa Marie after his daughter. Elvis bought it in April 1975 and spent more than 800,000 USD fitting it out, with a conference room, a bedroom and gold-plated seat belts. The smaller Lockheed JetStar carried his manager and staff between concerts.
Honest verdict: this is the stop people skip and shouldn't. The planes make Graceland feel like money rather than a house. They open at 10am, the airplane tour is not wheelchair accessible, and the complex is quieter after 2pm.
Stax Records started as Satellite Records in 1957, and its name came from the founders' surnames, Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. From a converted movie theater on McLemore Avenue it made Southern soul with a racially integrated staff and house band, Booker T. and the M.G.'s, behind Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers. The label went bankrupt in 1975, the building was torn down in 1989, and the museum on the same corner opened in 2003 as a replica of the studio.
It is the best music museum in town: the sloping floor of Studio A, a hall of records and listening stations. It sits in Soulsville, a neighborhood still recovering, beside a music academy.
Cozy Corner is a small barbecue joint at 735 North Parkway, north of downtown. Its own site advertises rib tips and ends, a pulled beef sandwich, barbecue nachos, bologna and wings. The plain building shouldn't put you off. Go for the ribs.
It is open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am to 8pm, and closed Sunday and Monday, which is the main reason this plan starts on a Wednesday.
Today is a walking day downtown. The Civil Rights Museum is closed on Tuesdays, and walk-ups get in only on standby, so buy a timed ticket online. After the clock change on the first Sunday of November the sun sets at about 5pm, so plan the ducks and Beale accordingly.
Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis in spring 1968 to support the city's striking Black sanitation workers. On the evening of April 4 he was shot on the balcony outside Room 306 of the Lorraine Motel and died within the hour, aged 39. The National Civil Rights Museum was built around that motel, opened on September 28, 1991, and was renovated in 2014. It is a Smithsonian affiliate.
A typical visit is 1.5 to 2 hours, and you will want more. The exhibits run from slavery through the Montgomery bus boycott and the Freedom Riders to the sanitation strike, and the museum also owns the Young and Morrow building across the street, the rooming house where Ray stayed. Who killed King is still disputed. Ray pleaded guilty in 1969 and later recanted, the King family believes he was a scapegoat, and a 1999 civil jury found a restaurant owner, Loyd Jowers, liable. A civil verdict has no bearing on the guilty plea, and a later Justice Department review found no evidence for Jowers's story. Honest verdict: the one stop in Memphis nobody should skip.
A ten-minute walk from the museum on South Front Street, Gus's serves the other Memphis meal: spicy fried chicken from a chain that started in the small town of Mason, Tennessee, and now has about 40 locations in 14 states. Plates come with baked beans, slaw and white bread. Order the dark meat, then save room for pie: chess, pecan and sweet potato are the usual choices.
It is open at 310 South Front Street daily from 11am, to 9pm (10pm on Fridays and Saturdays).
Sun Studio is a small brick building at 706 Union Avenue where Sam Phillips opened the Memphis Recording Service on January 3, 1950. Its claim to be the birthplace of rock and roll rests on Jackie Brenston's Rocket 88 in 1951, with Ike Turner on piano, and on what followed: Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roy Orbison all recorded here in the 1950s. On December 4, 1956, Elvis dropped in and jammed with Perkins and Lewis, with Cash there for a while, which became the Million Dollar Quartet tapes.
Honest verdict: a small room and a short visit, and the guided tour is the whole point. Tours leave once an hour, on the half hour.
Every day at 11am and 5pm, five mallards march across the lobby and into the marble fountain of the Peabody Hotel. It began in the 1930s, when the hotel's general manager and his friends came back from a hunting trip and put live duck decoys in the fountain as a joke. Today the ducks are raised by a local farmer, serve for three months, and go back to the wild. The Duckmaster leads the march.
It is silly, free and packed, and that is the point. The 1925 lobby is worth a look.
Beale Street was the heart of Black Memphis in the early 20th century. W. C. Handy, whose name is on the park here, is tied to its music, and Elvis window-shopped the flashy clothes at Lansky Brothers on the same street as a teenager.
Honest verdict: the most touristy street in the city and it knows it, with cover bands, souvenir shops and drinks in plastic cups. It is still worth one evening: walk it, listen to music in Handy Park, then step into a club with a real band. The street has an official curfew: after 8pm you must be 21 or with a parent, and after 11pm everyone must be 21 with ID. On select Friday, Saturday and holiday nights a 5 USD security fee starts at 9pm, and weapons are banned.
Today is flexible, so start outdoors. Big River Crossing opens at sunrise, and the Rendezvous opens at 11am on Fridays. If it rains, swap the bridge for more time at the Civil Rights Museum or Stax.
Big River Crossing is a pedestrian and bike path on the Harahan Bridge, a railway bridge that carried cars from 1917 to 1949. It opened in 2016 and, at nearly a mile long, is billed as the longest public pedestrian bridge over the Mississippi. You walk out over the water toward Arkansas and turn around for the Memphis skyline.
Honest verdict: the best free view in the city. Most visitors walk out, turn around and call it 90 minutes. It is open daily from sunrise to 10pm, and it is exposed, so dress for the wind.
Tom Lee Park is a mile-long strip of lawn and paths along the river just south of Beale Street, redesigned and reopened in 2023. It is named for a Black riverworker who could not swim and who in 1925 saved 32 people from the sinking steamboat M.E. Norman, in five trips in his skiff. A bronze sculpture of the rescue stands in the park.
Central BBQ started in 2002 on Central Avenue and is now a small Memphis chain, the newest name in this plan, but known for dry-rub ribs, pulled pork, smoked wings and barbecue nachos. The downtown branch on East Butler Avenue is a short walk from the Civil Rights Museum and the river. Its site says the ribs are marinated overnight and slow-smoked, served dry, wet or half and half. Order them dry the Memphis way.
The Pyramid is a 321-foot (98 m) pyramid by the river, built in 1991 as a 20,142-seat arena. Since 2015 it has been a Bass Pro Shops megastore with a hotel, restaurants and an outdoor observation deck near the apex.
Honest verdict: a very large outdoor store inside a landmark, but the deck view is worth an hour even if you buy nothing. A good wet-weather fallback.
The Rendezvous is the best-known barbecue name in Memphis. Charlie Vergos opened it in 1948 in the basement of his diner, found a coal chute and turned it into a pit. The city later named the alley Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous Alley. The address is 52 South 2nd Street, and the entrance is in the alley.
The ribs are the reason to come, and a barbecue shrimp skillet has to be ordered a day ahead. It is touristy and loud, but it is the historic room, which makes it a fitting last dinner. Open Tuesday to Thursday 11am-9pm and Friday and Saturday 11am-10pm.
These didn't fit, ordered by distance. Memphis is also the base for the Delta and the Mississippi blues trail.
Tunica, Mississippi, is a cluster of riverside casino resorts over the state line. Go for slots and a buffet. Honest verdict: not a sightseeing destination; Clarksdale is the better trip.
Getting there: Roughly 40 miles (65 km) south of downtown, about an hour by car (travel sites give different distances)
Clarksdale, Mississippi, is the town most tied to the Delta blues, and the Mississippi Blues Trail marks Muddy Waters's cabin on the old Stovall plantation. The Delta Blues Museum is open Monday to Saturday 10am-5pm (last admission 4:30pm); check the ticket price on its site. Ground Zero Blues Club, co-owned by Morgan Freeman, opened in 2001 in an old grocery and cotton warehouse nearby. It is the best day trip from Memphis, but it takes a full day, so do it as a fourth day or by dropping day three. The music is mostly at night, so check the calendar.
Getting there: 75 miles (120 km) south-west, about 1.5 hours by car
Official website
Elvis was born in a small house in Tupelo, Mississippi, on January 8, 1935. The complex has the house, a museum and the church he attended, for 25 USD (22 EUR) for all three. Open Monday to Saturday 9am-4pm, Sunday 1pm-4pm. A quiet counterpoint to Graceland, for real fans only.
Getting there: 105 miles (170 km) east, about 2 hours by car
Official website
The other Tennessee music city, built around country rather than blues and soul. Too far for a day trip, but a natural second leg by car. See our 3 Days in Nashville guide.
Getting there: 210 miles (340 km) east, about 4 hours by car
Overton Park is a 342-acre park in Midtown, established in 1906. It holds the Memphis Zoo, the Metal Museum and the Old Forest, one of the few old-growth forests left in Tennessee. A free half day on a nice afternoon.
Getting there: About 4 miles (6 km) east of downtown, 15 minutes by car or ride app
Memphis eats pork, fried chicken and pie, mostly in small places that open for lunch and close early.
The signature: pork ribs coated in a dry rub of salt and spices before slow cooking, usually eaten without sauce. Wet ribs are brushed with sauce. The World Championship Barbecue Cooking Contest each May is among the largest pork barbecue contests in the world.
Where to try it: Charlie Vergos' Rendezvous (since 1948) or Cozy Corner; both list Tuesday to Saturday hours only.
Memphis barbecue means pork, mostly ribs and shoulder, slow-smoked in a pit. It is one of the four big regional styles. Try the meat plain, then add sauce.
Where to try it: Cozy Corner, Rendezvous or Central BBQ. Interstate Bar-B-Que (1978) is loved too, but its hours vary online, so call.
Pork shoulder pulled by hand, on a soft bun with coleslaw on top. A cheap, filling lunch.
Where to try it: Central BBQ downtown, or any barbecue joint at lunch.
Chips piled with pulled pork, cheese and barbecue sauce, a Memphis barbecue-joint favorite that Central BBQ is known for. Good for sharing.
Where to try it: Central BBQ, East Butler Avenue downtown.
Noodles in a barbecue-sauce base with pork, a side at some old joints. It sounds odd and is worth one forkful.
Where to try it: Interstate Bar-B-Que has it on the menu.
Spicy, crisp and slightly sweet, with beans, slaw and white bread.
Where to try it: Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken, 310 South Front Street (daily from 11am).
Chess pie is a Southern custard pie of butter, sugar, eggs and flour. Pecan is the other classic. A slice is how a barbecue meal ends.
Where to try it: Gus's serves homemade slices.
Elvis's favorite: peanut butter and sliced banana on white bread. Silly, sweet and a must for fans.
Where to try it: Gladys' Diner at Graceland.
Black tea brewed strong, sweetened while hot and served over ice. It is the default at lunch, so ask for unsweet if you don't want sugar.
Where to try it: Any barbecue joint or diner.
Old Dominick Distillery revives a whiskey brand a Memphis family started in 1866, and its first Tennessee whiskey batch came in 2017. Wiseacre Brewing has a downtown taproom.
Where to try it: Old Dominick, 305 South Front Street (12-9pm Wednesday and Thursday, 12-10pm Friday and Saturday, shorter Sunday to Tuesday; one-hour tour about 15 USD); Wiseacre, 398 South B.B. King Boulevard (taproom hours vary by day, so check).
Memphis is spread out, so the choice is walking to the music downtown or being close to Graceland.
Best for: First-timers who want Beale Street, the Peabody and the riverfront on foot
Most of days two and three are within a mile or so, and the Peabody is the classic hotel. The catch: Graceland is a 15-minute drive, and you should use a ride app after dark away from Beale Street.
Best for: Travelers who want local restaurants, bars and a residential feel
Midtown sits around Overton Park and is a short drive from downtown and Stax. The catch: you need a car or ride app for every sight.
Best for: Elvis fans who want to be at the gates when they open
The Guest House at Graceland, at 3600 Elvis Presley Boulevard, and chain motels line the road near the mansion. The catch: it is nine miles from downtown, with little to do nearby in the evening.
Pinpoint USA: click each state on a blank map of America - inside the border for full points.
The practical stuff that makes the first day in Memphis easier.
Prices here are in US dollars, with euros in brackets at 1 USD = 0.898 EUR (rate of 29 October 2026). Cards and phones work nearly everywhere. Sales tax is added at the till: Tennessee's state rate is 7 percent and Memphis adds local tax, about 9.75 percent in all.
Expected in restaurants: 18-20 percent for table service, because servers are paid a low base wage. Tip bartenders about 1-2 USD (0.90-1.80 EUR) a drink. At a counter-service barbecue place a tip is welcome, not required.
The Civil Rights Museum is closed Tuesdays, Stax Mondays and Cozy Corner Sundays and Mondays. Starting on a Wednesday avoids every clash.
A rental car is easiest for Graceland and Stax. Without one, use a ride app for those two and walk downtown. MATA, the city transit authority, has made buses and trolleys free since November 2025 as an extended pilot; if that ends, an adult bus fare is 1 USD (0.90 EUR).
Memphis has had one of the highest violent crime rates among large US cities for years. Memphis police reported in 2025 that crime had fallen to a 25-year low across major categories, and a federal task force that includes the National Guard has operated in the city since autumn 2025. Stay in the lit parts of downtown and Beale, use a ride app after dark, and keep valuables out of parked cars. Beale Street has a posted curfew and weapons ban.
US clocks go back on the first Sunday of November and the sun then sets around 5pm. Graceland runs separate, pricier Christmas tours (about 200 USD for adults) from mid-November to December 23, and Elvis Week is in mid-August around August 16, the anniversary of his death.
Yes. It covers every major sight with barbecue each day. A fourth day buys you Clarksdale or Tupelo.
Yes if you like Elvis or American music. The 85 USD (76 EUR) Elvis Experience is right for most people; Entourage VIP only shortens the line, and the guided tiers (215-260 USD) add a live guide and, before 1:30pm, a meal.
Memphis has a high crime rate by US standards, though police reported a drop in 2025. Stay in lit areas, use ride apps after dark and keep valuables out of the car.
For one evening. It is touristy, but some clubs have good live music. Mind the curfew: under 21s need a parent after 8pm, and nobody under 21 is allowed after 11pm.
Clarksdale, Mississippi, about 75 miles away, for the Delta Blues Museum and Ground Zero Blues Club. It takes a full day. Tupelo, Elvis's birthplace, is second, and Tunica is for gamblers.
No. A barbecue plate is 15-25 USD (13-22 EUR) and the major museums are 20-25 USD (18-22 EUR). The full Graceland ticket is the big spend.
Visitors from the 40 or so Visa Waiver Program countries, including most of Europe, need an approved ESTA instead of a visa, applied for online at the official CBP site before you fly. It costs about 41 USD (37 EUR) and covers stays up to 90 days. Everyone else needs a visitor visa.
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