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.
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.
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.
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.
Pueblo, CO from tv commercials or maybe Wala Wala, WA from Bugs Bunny.
Walla Walla, it was also a lyric in an Offspring song.
Also in this song
Witch Doctor - Ooh Eeh Ooh Ah Aah Ting Tang Walla Walla Bing Bang
Pueblo, CO
Mostly because it is (or was) a publication distribution hub.
Virtually no one outside of the US will have heard of it, though.
Wąchock in Poland, (in)famous for being the place where tons of jokes happen, population around 2800.
Also Jeruzal, a.k.a. fictional village of Wilkowyje, the place where famous TV show “Ranczo” was made, population around 340.
The New Orleans French Quarter is easy to spot.
Not my location, but Scranton, PA?
Dont live near Pennsylvania at all, but Scranton sounds very familiar .
“The Office”
Also all those bananas.
In the Netherlands is probably Giethoorn, the ‘Venice of the North’ which has many canals instead of roads and is very touristy. It has 2.900 inhabitants
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
OP said famous, not infamous.
💀
Ah yeah, I was going for instantly recognizable
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.
Well, Brazil is such a huge country and there are lots of smallest cities with still huge population.
Unfornately i would have to say that the smallest one and most famous would probably be because of some recent disaster and one I can remember is Brumadinho. Less than 40k people, a city destroyed after a dam collapsed and a lot of mud flooded everywhere, 5 years ago
How about: name a country and name the smallest city you recognize from there. Like New Zealand you could say Rotarua
Christ there’s a generation of Brits only know that name because of a pædo 😂
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=SwozMhzTTbs&si=qTeXDDhVFjTMxlv9
Winnipeg, Canada (pop. 850k) has a famous namesake in Winnie the Pooh (who was named after Winnipeg) and has been in the Simpsons.
850k isn’t really small though.
It’s still small for a city, especially a capital city. However, it’s bigger than Regina 😄
Your “small city” has more people than 5 US states
It has more people than anywhere that has less people.
Hallstatt - Austria
The city so beautiful that the Chinese copied it.
For Australia I would go with Snowtown for the bodies in barrels. Or maybe Kendall where William Tyrrell disappeared. Both towns are pretty small.
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.
Not my country, but what immediately came to mind was one that has global name recognition, and minimal population: Chernobyl.
It used to have around 12,000 population, but now it’s technically illegal to live nearby, and up to 150 people are estimated to live there today. It’s famous for being toxically irradiated as a result of the worst nuclear disaster in human history