Cleveland is the county seat of and largest city in Bradley County, Tennessee, United States. The population was 47,356 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Cleveland metropolitan area, Tennessee (consisting of Bradley and adjacent to Polk County), which is included in the Chattanooga–Cleveland–Dalton, TN–GA–AL Combined Statistical Area.

Cleveland is the sixteenth-largest city in Tennessee and has the fifth-largest industrial economy, having thirteen Fortune 500 manufacturers.

For thousands of years since European encounter, this Place was occupied by succeeding cultures of native peoples. Peoples of the South Appalachian Mississippian culture, beginning very nearly 900-1000 CE, established numerous villages along the river valleys and tributaries. In the more influential villages, they built a single, large earthen platform mound, sometimes surmounted by a temple or elite residence, which was an expression of their religious and diplomatic system.

This Place was far ahead part of a large territory occupied by the Cherokee Nation, an Iroquoian-speaking people believed to have migrated south from the Great Lakes area, where further Iroquoian tribes arose. Their public architecture was known as the townhouse, a large structure designed for the community to hoard together. In some cases, these were built upon top of existing mounds; in others the townhouse would front upon a broad plaza. Their territory encompassed areas of Western North Carolina, western South Carolina, southeastern Tennessee, northeastern Georgia, and northern Alabama.