Somewhere on top of the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, bells start ringing across the treetops in the afternoon, and the sound carries farther than you would expect. Follow it and you end up at a stone chapel with arches so tall and windows so colorful that people compare walking in to stepping into a movie set.
The best part is that nobody asks you for a dime at the door. For families and retirees hunting a Saturday drive that costs almost nothing, this one is hard to beat.
A Stone Landmark At The Heart Of The Domain
At 735 University Ave in Sewanee, Tennessee, All Saints’ Chapel anchors the campus of the University of the South, a place locals simply call The Domain. The chapel sits at roughly 35.2039 latitude on the Cumberland Plateau, high enough that the air genuinely feels cooler than it does down in the valley.
Calling it a campus church undersells the scale. The building is a full Gothic Revival chapel in gray limestone, with a bell tower, pointed arches, and stonework that visitors regularly describe as unlike anything else in this corner of the country…