In the United States, I’d probably name Oregon City, the famous end of the Oregon Trail and the first city founded west of the Rocky Mountains during the pioneer era. Its population is only 37,000.
Gergovie. The place where we defeated romans 2000 years ago. Doesn’t even exist anymore
What about Alesia though?
Nobody knows where it is
Ramstein, population ~5600
Famous for the Ramstein Air base, the bombing of the air base, the Ramstein air show disaster and the band named after all of that.
I went to school on base, grades 1-4, mid 1960s. My takeaway: planes with Ramjets!
Dildo, Newfoundland.
Not really though.
Off the top of my head I’d say places like Gander, Churchill, Iqaluit - places known maybe for their location as much as their people and unique situations?
Edit: another comment (Aspen) made me want to mention Banff but Alberta isn’t acting Canadian anymore so it no longer counts.
Edit: I got it - my bet is Charlottetown, PEI, because those Anne of Green Gables books were wildly popular on the international market, and I imagine fans tried to find Avonlea on a map and learned that Charlottetown exists.
I’m probably still wrong, this is actually kind of a tough question.
Edit 2: Nah I change my mind, maybe Gimli, MB because the Gimli Glider incident did garner quite a bit of attention.
Charlottetown is a good answer actually. Bigger than I thought though, 40k people.
Nope
Yellowknife has a population of 20,000. Is that considered small enough?
I’d say no in the context of the OP. That’s one of our major cities in our own way. And a territorial capital.
Omg…i spent 4 hours in Gander one evening, so it took about 20 hours to go Dallas -> Chicago -> Gander-> Chicago.
“A week in Gander one day.”
Banff is what I was looking for in this list (pop ~8300). Not many places in this country are ‘acting Canadian’ anymore.
The smallest Canadian city that I’d think most people around the world might know about is Niagara Falls, although they might only know about the falls and not know that it’s also a city.
Edit: I thought the question meant people around the world but I guess it could also mean just the people in your own country…
Gibraltar has a population of 32,000, which by some definitions is too small to be considered a city.
Gibraltar is a city?
I am American, so low bar, but there are dozens of us.
It’s a city, it’s a really big rock, it’s a maritime port, it’s the only wild monkey population in Europe, it’s a 2½ mi2 British Overseas Territory whose status is perennially contested by Spain.
It might not count as a city but Nome Alaska has the Iditarod with only, 3700 people. Or maybe some famous battlefield, Gettysburg has 7100 people. A ski resort like Aspen could count with 7000. We all had to memorize state capitals so maybe somewhere like Montpelier, Vermont has more recognition but has 7800 people.
Jeez, I had no idea Aspen and Montpelier were so small.
You can drive through Aspen in 5 min. It’s tiny.
Idk about Montpelier but Aspen is kind of connected to a more populated area in the Roaring Fork valley.
The Roaring Fork Valley has like 50k or 40k total. Maybe more if you throw in some of Colorado Valley towns like Rifle and Silt.
Aspen has been experiencing a deep housing crisis for years. They have to bus in most of their workers from nearby towns because no one who has to work for a living can afford to live in Aspen. Now there’s a worker shortage because no one can afford to live in the outlying towns either.
Sturgis also has a population of around 7,000, and has a pretty significant cultural awareness because of its annual motorbiking event
we have a town called “Fucking” with only a few hundred people living there. the town sign gets stolen once a month
I thought they changed their name? Isn’t it called “Fugging” now?
yeah it looks like it, I’ve searched for “bad fucking” on Google maps and it returned Fugging
iThe City of London might be one, it has a very small resident population, but I dont know how many people know that it is a separate city from London. It’s famos for being chock full of c*nts most of the day.
It’s famos for being chock full of c*nts most of the day.
Also how it’s eerily dead on the weekends.
Unfortunately, I would guess that school shooter locations are probably the most easily recognised in the US. Uvalde has a population of ~15,000, for instance.
Sandy Hook is ~9,000. You may not remember, but Alex Jones does.
Yeah Alex Jones can rot in hell
We remember.
OP said famous, not infamous.
💀
Ah yeah, I was going for instantly recognizable
Similar to how more people have heard of Lockerbie than any other Scottish town of 5000 people.
Forks, Washington population of ~7000 made very notable due to the twilight series. Or Astoria, Oregon population of ~10,000 made famous by the Goonies.
Puerto Hurraco. Population 100. Everybody in Spain recognises its name because of a shooting that got burned into the collective mind.
Fucking, Austria. Population of around 100 People. They renamed it to Fugging a few years ago
I legitimately though Oregon was a State, I didn’t know it was also a city.
From my country I’m going to be generous and say Barcelona. Second biggest city here. I doubt next bigger cities are universally known.
I think Seville and Pamplona are well known, for the Barber of Seville and the running of the bulls respectively.
Granada is pretty famous for tourist reasons, but unfortunately will be confused with Grenada, so it probably doesn’t count. Ibiza, maybe?
Schengen - the village in Luxembourg where the Schengen Agreement was signed. The population was 5196 in 2023 (appears to be the last census quoted on Wikipedia) and the “Schengen Area”, covered by the agreement represents 450m people.
That’s a great one!
I didn’t even know there were multiple villages in Luxembourg. I kinda thought it was a city-state.
I thought so too before moving here, but there’s two cities, and a lot of empty space (in the north in particular) with lots of towns and villages, it’s not like Monaco or the Vatican City in that regard.
That being said, it’s still all very close together, you can drive from the northern most point to the south in about 1.5-2 hours.
The funniest thing I’ve learned about the geography is that there is a North/South divide where people from either don’t trust people from the other.
That is funny!
Gruyères, Switzerland. 2000 inhabitants. Famous for the famous Swiss cheese of the same name.
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