Most walkable cities for a short break?

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Where could I avoid using public transport and just explore by foot?

Copenhagen
Amsterdam
Lisbon
Edinburgh
Brussels
Vienna
Florence
Stockholm

York.
Belfast.
Edinburgh.
Liverpool.

Outside the UK, Malta (yes I know that's a country :) public transport really puts ours to shame though and one of the two official languages is English, pretty much everyone we met spoke it better than most native born people in England....)

Or how about Jersey? Warm, pleasant, no language barrier, decent public transport

Some of these suggestions are seriously not walkable unless I have been doing it wrong all of my life. I agree that the old towns of Florence, Seville, Dubrovnik are walkable but Paris, London, New York? I wouldn't 😶

Paris, London and New York are brilliant cities for walking - it doesn't mean you have to walk the entire city in a couple of days, but imagine mooching around Bloomsbury for a day, or Kensington. Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, the Left Bank.

Okay, so based on that every place on Earth is walkable.
Even China because I visited Beijing and I walked. So we might as well just list every single city and town on this planet for OP. What’s the point of this thread then?

Well, no, because I wouldn't say LA or Dallas are particularly walkable cities. Or Shanghai. Or Mumbai. They have interesting things to see, but spending the day walking round them wouldn't be a great deal of fun. Too many cars, too many people to stroll comfortably. Walkable cities are those where you can mooch about , plenty of interesting stuff to see, pleasant places to sit and watch the world go by.

Yup, people are just naming all cities. Even ones that are not particularly compact. Pointless.

Even seeing different parts on different days involves the OP taking public transport from wherever she is staying each day.

Unless of course she wants to schlep in 40 degree heat to the Vatican for an hour and a bit. And then back.

Or walk the (annoying since you have to stop at crossings every few minutes) walk from, say, the upper east side to lower manhattan and then all the way to Brooklyn, DUMBO without making use of ferries and then back again. Great fun. How fucking walkable 🤣

Yup, people are just naming all cities. Even ones that are not particularly compact. Pointless.
Even seeing different parts on different days involves the OP taking public transport from wherever she is staying each day.

Nope. I gave at least 3 days potential itineraries, all very different, for a short break from one location in London.

Easy to do the same thing for Paris.

Ljubljana - very compact city. Worth hiring a car for a day trip or two to get out of the city if it's more than a long weekend.

Paris - if you like walking. We spent a week there, saw the sites we wanted and other than a taxi to/from the airport walked everywhere.

It depends on how much of the city you want to see though. And how much walking you consider a lot - it varies enormously.

Maybe you don’t see the entirety of Rome. But there is quite a lot you can do within walking distance if you’re staying somewhere central. It’s not compulsory to go to the Vatican, for example.

And some people might decide that an hour walk, potentially broken up by a stop or two each way (a cafe for a coffee, a visit to something interesting on the way, is exactly what they ant to do on holiday. It’s not just about getting to places, but the pottering around and exploring between them.

Truly unwalkable cities are the ones where you couldn’t even really pick a place to stay and elect to do only things within walking distance. LA, for example, is both sprawling and largely unwalkable because it was designed to be driven around. Few European cities are like that.

York
Newcastle
Carlisle
Edinburgh
Bath
Canterbury

Oops not all cities but walkable

It depends entirely where you want to go and what you want to do.

The last time I visited Paris was meeting 2 friends and their teen DD’s and their skinflint DF wanted us to walk everywhere from morning until night! But you can walk from area to area - I think we did Arc de Triomphe, champs-elysees, Tuilieries and Louvre and a Marais walking tour.

The only time we did a metro was visiting Cluny/La Sorbonne and I got the metro in the mornings to meet them as I was in a hotel near the Eiffel Tower.

New York I’ve easily walked around various areas in a day but you need rest stops and as it’s humid and can be hot, to take your time.

London - I live in London. Ideal walking tours are the Southbank one where you can go to Tate Modern and then cross to St Paul’s etc.

re the above, yes I’ve done tour buses, tour river boats and public transport too.

Barcelona as I was with a family member who’s a paraplegic in an electric wheelchair we used the metro a fair bit bit to get to eg Parc Guell/Montjuïc the buses are fine. But we walked a lot around the gothic, maritime, university etc quarters.

I disagree. I have properly lived in all of those (not just visited as a tourist) and they are cities with the main sights spread out.

There's always one champion walker who scales the local hills every weekend and could walk anywhere from anywhere but I am not assuming that is the assumption upon which the OP is basing her post.

There are 2 types of person, 1 who likes walking, the other who doesn’t.

For me, walking hours every day on holiday would kill me, which is why I’ve mentioned interspersing with public transport.

But leisurely walks with stops for coffee, ice cream, lunch, sightseeing in eg Barcelona is more fun than going on the metro all day! On holiday if I’m doing a city break, I plan my days to include walks etc.

You’re assuming that ‘seeing all the sights’
is the aim. If you’ve decided you’re going to walk everywhere, then it’s less the case that you’ve decided to visit ‘London’ than that you’ve picked an area within London to visit.

Whether that appeals as a holiday is probably quite a personal preference. There are many ways to visit or see a city. Sometimes people want to just spend a few days wandering around and aren’t that bothered about bagging all the main sites. Which is OK too.

I had a really good weekend in Helsinki once where I don’t think I did anything much beyond just wandering around. It was very relaxing.

Obviously, if you are going to feel
like you missed out because you didn’t see the top attractions in a city (which is also a reasonable position to take), it’s going to be best to choose a pretty small city if you want to walk to everything.

But that is a perfectly reasonable assumption to make? Most people go on holiday to see the main sights. Otherwise, I cannot imagine why someone visiting London would get off at say, Heathrow and stay in Hayes for the week wandering about, getting as far as Slough on a good day?
I say that but I have come across a really rare handful of cases of people going abroad without a clue about how to 'do tourism'. I know there is probably a fashionable movement which encourages it to get a flavour of local life at local pace. It would go something like this:
"What did you do during your week in Paris?"
"I went to Lidl, I found a local park and walked round a few times."

"Nope. I gave at least 3 days potential itineraries, all very different, for a short break from one location in London."

What makes you think I was referring to you? I never even mentioned London! Odd.

But that’s reduction to the absurd.

It’s more like deciding that you’re going to Montmartre for a few days and that you’re just going to see the sights that are walkable from that part of Paris.

That’s as legitimate a way to ‘do tourism’ as having a checklist of the key sites of the city as a whole.

"You’re assuming that ‘seeing all the sights’
is the aim."

Well the OP did as for the "most" walkable cities and said she wished to explore it.

It's hardly a wild leap to think she'd like to explore most of the city on foot.

The point is that in a small city like Split, the OP can see most of it on foot or enough of it to make it worthwhile even if she is not a marathon walker. In a city like London, unless she is plonked in the right postcode, what she can potentially get out of it at easily walking distance may range from several sites (central hotel) to absolutely nothing. With the prices of holidays these days, why would a tourist be aiming for the latter? They may as well save their money and not go at all.

The poster was demonstrating that even in big cities it is possible to do lots by foot from a good choice of accommodation location, and see a choice of prime attractions, to make a short break worthwhile.

Posters getting very stroppy on this most harmless of threads 😂

Well that took a decidedly odd turn. Sorry OP, I didn't think my comment would cause so much controversy!

To me, if you've a weekend in a city like London, you're not expecting to do all the sights. London is like a series of interconnected villages, so you could spend a day on the Southbank, do a tour of the Globe, visit Borough Markets, Southwark Cathedral.

You could spend a day mooching round Chelsea, visit the Physic Garden and the hospital, stroll around the mews lanes, coffee and lunch in the King's Road, then a bit of shopping.

Or head for Spitalfields - Denis Severs house, Brick Lane and all the markets and cafes, restaurants, food stalls.

Perfect weekend.