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.
Chicken, Alaska. Population: 12
I’d argue that everyone recognises the word “Chicken”.Fun fact: The settlers wanted to name their town “Ptarmigan” after the birds that were abundant in the area.
But none of them knew the correct spelling, and they didn’t want to embarass themselves.Congratulations, you played yourself.
Gergovie. The place where we defeated romans 2000 years ago. Doesn’t even exist anymore
Here in Illinois is Woodstock, at ~25,600 (2020 per Wikipedia). It was the town where Groundhog Day was filmed. There’s even some small road signs here and there mentioning it for the rare tourist who comes to see it. Smallest place in the state I can think of, though there’s smaller towns that have been used for movies.
Some upcoming off-brand Hallmark x-mas movie will feature local tourist trap town Long Grove IL, pop ~ 8,300 (2020 per Wikipedia). The director grew up near there so knew about it and thought it’d be perfect for his movie.
In the UK and a city? Probably Liverpool and because of The Beatles.
A Town? Well it certainly used to be Lockerbie where Pan-Am flight 103 crashed after a terrorist bombing just before Christmas 1988. It was on it’s way from London to New York.
Probably not known by the younger generations though.
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 don’t know about the smallest, but I’ve always thought that Santa Fe, New Mexico has an outsized influence on everything from food to art to architecture and culture. I visited last year and it was much smaller than I envisioned, partly because there are local regulations on building height to keep from ruining the charm of the city.
For the US, I’d say a pretty strong contender is Woodstock, NY, with a population of around 6,000, and of course famous for the music festival of the same name (even though the actual festival was something like 60 miles away in Bethel)
PANAMA!
Van Halen, spring break, population 35,600.
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
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.
Wąchock in Poland, (in)famous for being the place where tons of jokes happen, population around 2800.
Also Jeruzal, though known under its fictional of Wilkowyje, the place where famous TV show “Ranczo” was made, population around 340.
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
Wacken, Germany.
Population: 2110
Home to one of the biggest metal festivals in the world with something between 70k and 120k people. I think Tickets are limited to 70k currently but the whole area is bascially transformed for a week
What’s more well known around the world, Wacken or Rammstein? Because Wacken is smaller than Ramstein and would be the better answer but my guess is that Rammstein are more known.
Rammstein is not a town though, Ramstein(-Miesenbach) is.
I think a good chunk of US american military folks are familiar with Ramstein air base, less so Ramstein-Miesenbach. Internationally I’d imagine even less of either.
Even plenty Rammstein (band) fans aren’t familiar with the origin of the name, nor the town near the airbase :)
I’d comfortably take a bet that Wacken rings more bells around the globe.
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!
By population, and not land area, certain more remote geographic places are well known but have quite a low population. ‘Everyone’ is a high bar, but most adults in Australia would know the following places (ordered from smaller population but slightly less known to higher population):
- Wittenoom, WA - population 0 - well known in Australia for being heavily contaminated with dangerous blue asbestos (which used to be mined there until the 60s), and having been de-gazetted and removed from maps to discourage tourism to it.
- Coober Pedy, SA - population 1437 - well known in Australia for its underground homes and opal production.
- Alice Springs, NT - population 25,912 - well known for being near the centre of Australia in the rangelands (outback) - most larger population centres in Australia are coastal.
I reckon Port Arthur is a solid contender with its low population of 251 (known for being the site of a mass shooting that led to significant changes in Australian gun laws). It is fading in name recognition as time goes on though, after all that was approaching 30 years ago and lots of people have been born since then.
My top pick however would be Bega with its population of 5013 and the name recognition the cheese factory has brought. It’s hard to go past a name that’s printed on cheese (and assorted other products now) in the vast majority of supermarkets across Australia, and they even export overseas to get a bit of international cachet.
Bega is sister city to Littleton, CO. A town famous for the Columbine school shooting in 1998.
