Looking for less crowded city over NYE 2025-26!

On my bucket list is Edinburg for NYE. Friends did it and highly recommended the experience! Safe travels!

Since it's more of a summer place, I'm going to guess that anywhere along the Amalfi Coast will be relatively quiet for NYE. You can day trip to all Roman sites and museums in the area.

In France I suggest you consider Metz. The Musée de La Cour d'Or is fantastic, with Celtic and Roman exhibits that are world class. And it's free! It's a beautiful town, with excellent food, and the fireworks should be spectacular if it's clear and the river reflects them.

In Germany consider Wurzburg. Great museums, good food, and a local crowd.

I'll also suggest you consider looking at Konstanz, or possibly Dornbirn or one of the places on the south end of the lake. Lots of history. great hotels and spas. excellent food and museums (including the paleontology on in Bodman). You could easily spend a week around the lake and not see everything.

Pat, JKH & KGC, thanks for the great ideas! I’m just recovering from jet lag so apologies for the slow reply. The Amalfi coast at that time of year is a good idea, maybe Salerno, with a visit to Paestum & Pompeii, (just not Naples,) HA. Both Metz & Wurzburg look like they have excellent museums), off to the library tomorrow to investigate! Wurzburg would be very easy to reach from FRA, a plus for us as there are non-stop flights from ARN. Thanks again!

There are plenty of quiet towns and villages all over Europe with old town centres etc.. that are unknown to the tourist world... In my area here in Switzerland there is Wiedlisbach, huttwil and Burgdorf just to mention a few of them.

Burgdorf would probably meet your requirements:
- On a direct line to both Geneva and Zurich Airports
- Within an easy distance of Christmas markets in Basel, Zurich, Bern, Lausanne etc...
- Within an easy distance of most hot spots in the Berner Oberland
- Nobody around but the locals...

I'm sure there are many more options

Hey thanks Jim! I will take a look at the library. Lived in Switzerland in the Engadine Valley for a year out of college, might be fun to see some old friends too. Most appreciated!

Circling back as I look into some of these museums - The Musée de la Cour d'Or in Metz looks AMAZING, https://musee.eurometropolemetz.eu/fr/.

This was now almost 12 years ago, but we spent NYE (and the few days before and after) in Piano di Sorrento, adjacent to Sorrento, italy. Christmas had been on Sicily.

The NYE was fairly subdued, with dinner at a cooking school run by the chef who also owned the B&B where we were staying. I’m not sure if it’s still running. Short walk after dinner, but the town was pretty quiet, and not a lot of activity, at least where we were. We turned in early.

At midnight, I was awakened by popping sounds outside. There were fireworks, but not a commercial or municipal show. People were setting off their own, around the neighborhood, one rocket or fountain at a time, scattered around the buildings. It was all over after 20 minutes.

The next day, January 1, the ruins at Pompeii were open. The site was originally supposed to be closed, but was open until 1:00 P.M. We were able to drive to an adjacent parking lot and get right in. Not crowded.

Hey thanks Syn, Piano di Sorrento looks lovely and we're really liking the idea of being near Naples with access to Pompeii & Hurculeaum.

I should have added that there are all kinds of places that include great art, such as churches! HA.

Any interest in Spain? My husband & I attended the Cadiz Carnaval in February 2024 for several days which is huge, but we never felt crowded or just in a mass of people. It was easy to walk a few blocks away if we wanted a break, too. From that experience, I would think a combo of Sevilla, Cordoba or Malaga might be a good option & for decent weather, too.

For Italy, I am a fan of Bari & it should be good weather. It has many museums; the Museo Archeologico di Santa Scolastica is just one of the options. I like the split-level rooms, location & breakfast at the Palazzo Calo in Bari Vecchia. (I booked it again for next May.)

Thanks Jean, I should have added Southern Spain to our list, though where could we spend NYE with a bit of elbow room, perhaps Toledo? Bari looks fantastic, I'm just not sure it would hold our attention for a week, more likely if we added train travel to Sorrento to visit Pompeii.

KGC mentioned Metz. “The Musée de La Cour d'Or is fantastic, with Celtic and Roman exhibits that are world class. It's a beautiful town, with excellent food.” So we could fly to CDG, train to Rheims for a few nights & spend NYE in Metz.

Some folks say Reims isn't all that interesting, but I like it. If you want to tour the Champagne houses make sure you book early. I think the ones with a meal offering are the nicest, but usually I just get my wine at one of the shops. La Vinocave is good, and there's a Vintage spirits place just down the block that has a very nice selection of old Armagnac. (Don't buy without a tasting.) L'Vintage by the cathedral is good too. Those places are not the cheapest, but if that's what you want, go to a Carrefour or Cora, they usually have the best prices.

If you ask at the specialized shops they may know of a wine or food tasting that's local. These can be a nice way to spend an evening.

Reims has a lot of history, but most of it is very hard to find. For example, during WWI the sector around the Cathedral was heavily bombarded, my Michelin Guidebook from 1919 shows hundreds of shell holes. You won't find a trace of this now. But Reims has been very heavily fought over for centuries.

If you have any interest in old cars, make sure you visit the Musee Automobile, they have stuff you won't see anywhere else.

Most great museums are in large cities like Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, London and Madrid.

I you like ancient, consider Egypt, there are tons of ancient stuff there and the weather in the Winter is still a bit warm.
Your new year's eve experience might not be so big.

Florence comes to mind as a mid-sized city with great museums.

Thanks to both of you for adding some new ideas... KGC, Reims definitely fits along with Metz, non-stop flight to CDG and easy to get to by train. Thanks for the additional ideas, that automobile museum sounds great. And even though champagne isn't a go-to, we'd definitely do a tour with food. I'm building a list in my Notes for the area, if not in December, definitely sometime soon!

OR fly to MPX and train to Turin with a few day stopover in Milan on way home. (Thanks to Acraven, who mentioned on a thread how many great museums & of course the cathedral there are to see in Milan.) I've now amassed a large number of museums between the 2 cities!

geovagriffith - You’re so right about ancient Egypt, AND most large museums are in larger towns, so we seem be migrating towards 2 slightly smaller destinations for this trip. I’m thinking the largest collection of Egyptian antiquities outside Egypt in Turin would be a great place to visit! (Florence is definitely on our list, but it will need to be off off season given the crowds.)

My one other NYE in Europe was 2018, when I was taking a French language semester in Nice. A friend I made in Nice knew about a theater in Monaco. She brought me and two other friends, and we had a girls’ NYE night out. They didn’t technically serve dinner before the play, but there were hors d’oeuvres, quite a lot of them. It was packed, and you really couldn’t move around easily. There must’ve been assigned seats for the play, though, because we had seats, and weren’t packed like sardines at that point. After the performance, the venue was turned into a dance hall. I don’t know whether Monte Carlo has any outside fireworks or other gatherings, and I couldn’t say whether the casino there puts on any production. I don’t know more about the theater venue at this point; Estelle would have to provide me details, if that NYE event still happens.

Cyn, What a lovely memory.... And a semester learning French in Nice sounds amazing! I wish we liked modern art, (sorry, but we just don't, we've tried!), Nice would have been first on our list, great weather & plenty of museums. I'm digging into the list of museums in Milan this week. Thanks everyone!

Following up - Has anyone spent NYE in Torino?? (It will be crowded and loud of course, we're just hoping less chaotic than Rome!) Turin seems to be edging out Reims / Metz which we'd love to do in springtime or autumn. Thanks everyone!

How about mainland Greece anywhere outside Athens?

Would still love to hear from anyone who's been to Turin over NY! Thanks!

Thanks Johnnt, we're heading to Greece in June!
Mr E, no interest in Eastern Europe for this trip, thanks. Since I hitchhiked Columbia, Ecuador Peru & Bolivia when I was 18, and lived a year in Costa Rica FIFTY years ago as an exchange student, I'm hardly the person to tell to get out of my comfort zone! hahaha. This is a birthday trip, I'm looking for cozy, not adventure.

Málaga is another city to consider. Better weather than the others mentioned so far.

Hey, thanks for the suggestion of Malaga but as we're coming from Sweden, basically anywhere south will be warmer & have more sunlight! (Even Copenhagen has an hour more of light in January.) We're really most interested in museum-heavy cities. At this point it's looking like Turin for a week, then Milan for 3 nights. I'm checking on the Italian forum to see if anyone has spent NYE in Turin, the city itself gets rave reviews from Forum members, with great museums, excellent food, & best of all, smaller crowds!

This year, for me, it was Metz, which, if you have not been to, I highly recommend as it hits all of your requirements. The Musee le Cour d'Ore is built on the remains of a Roman bath and has a fantastic display of Bronze Age and Roman artifacts. The city has been settled for over 2000 years, it's attractive, has a nice Christmas Market and fireworks, doesn't draw a lot of tourists, especially in winter. The food is good (fest stalls this year featured oysters, frog legs, snails, tartiflette, candies and nougats cut off of 10 kilo blocks, and a whole lot more). Stay at the Citadel, a repurposed military fortification near the center of town.

Trier would also be worth considering. Great history, great food, very attractive, nice markets. Note that the History Museum in Trier has the largest selection of Roman mosaics north of Rome itself, which makes sense as it was the second largest Roman city for over 500 years.

If you want a place where it's even less crowded with the international tourist scene stay in Deidesheim on the German Winestrasse. It's a 1300 year old walled city, with boutique hotels, Michelin restaurants, and a number of very good winestube. Then, on Sylvester, take a drive a short distance to Neuleiningen Castle and you can look out over the Rhine valley and watch the fireworks from Mannheim, Speyer, and all the smaller towns and cities in between. (Neuleiningen is so small you'll have to park about 200 yards away, outside town.)

Metz & Trier both look fantastic, thanks KGC! Thinking about a 4-day trip in the springtime to Rouen then onward to Metz, especially as it has such an amazing mosaic collection, more research to do.....