America's 20 Best Small Towns - 04/25/12 09:35 AM
Northern Virginia homeowners, looking for places to visit this summer?  America is stuffed with world-class "big cities";  New York,  San Francisco and Chicago make for three great examples.  But beyond the biggest cities, there are some wonderful small towns to visit, too.

Smithsonian.com highlights 20 of them on its website.  One of them is within a few hours drive from the Washington DC area.
Focusing on cities with 25,000 residents or fewer, the publication ranked areas high in "culture"; towns with high concentrations of museums, public gardens, art galleries and other cultural assets including resident orchestras.
The author states "big … (2 comments)