philishappilylivingonmars

Erm... I'm sorry to say that yes, the world has been built with cheats. Or how else would you describe wars and colonial empires?

Plus, Paris is a famous city because it has numerous landmarks that are known all over the world. So Paris is famous for ... Xian however, or any other Chinese (industrial) city, might be known by the entire Chinese population but have no landmarks and thus not be famous as in known for its... I somehow agree with what you say, but this shows that one can spend hours debating the meaning of fame.

Well, I think we're mixing famous with influential here. The most influential cities are the Western cities because they house headquarters of world organizations. But for the most famous cities, in terms of "how many people know city X or Y", mathematically, you can only come up with Asian cities because the population outnumbers the Western population. And @j-lee ; it's Brussels, not Brusseles. I'm just saying because it's my home town

You can't make a list of the top ten most famous cities in the world and not include Chinese or Indian cities. China and India make up for roughly 3 billion people, approximatively half of the global population. So just take their capitals, and you've got one in two people in the world who know those cities. So I'd say the top ten is dominated by Chinese and Indian cities and just a few Western cities such as New York and London.