The 7 best small cities in Europe

Gabriel Garcia Marengo/Flickr

Lausanne, Switzerland

Usually when new visitors travel to Europe, it's to the big capital cities-those cities that make it into all the movies and TV dramas. We travel to Paris, to London, to Madrid and Barcelona and Amsterdam and Brussels.

But in a continent of vastly diverse cultures, it's often the small cities where local culture really shines. And while big European cities will always hold a special place in our collective global history, it's the smaller cities which retain the old-world charm with new-world culture.