England's smallest city — a cathedral close frozen in the Middle Ages
Wells is England's smallest city (population ~12,000) — but it earns the designation of 'city' by having a cathedral, and what a cathedral it is. The West Front of Wells Cathedral is the finest assemblage of medieval sculpture in England — 300 carved figures covering the entire facade in a vast stone iconostasis. The Bishop's Palace, still inhabited, is moated and swans pull a rope to ring a bell for food. The city feels genuinely medieval and unhurried, at the foot of the Mendip Hills on the edge of the Somerset Levels.
Wells takes its name from the springs that rise in the Cathedral grounds — the same springs that attracted a Saxon settlement and a minster church in the 8th century. The present cathedral was begun c.1175 CE in the new Early English Gothic style. The city was a stop on the medieval pilgrimage to Glastonbury Abbey (11km south), and much of its medieval infrastructure — the cathedral close, Bishop's Palace moat, Vicars' Close — survives intact, making it one of the best-preserved small cathedral cities in Europe.