Abandoned Places
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99 free Abandoned Places trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
12 free Abandoned Places trivia questions with answers. Discover the mysteries of the world's most haunting abandoned locations with our engaging trivia quiz. From ghost towns to crumbling castles, test your knowledge about these fascinating deserted places. Can you answer all 99 questions correctly?
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Built to house workers at the nuclear plant that exploded in 1986, which Ukrainian city was evacuated and never resettled?
Pripyat
A city built for the plant died with it. Pripyat, in Kyiv Oblast near the Belarus border, housed the Chernobyl workers and was emptied after the April 1986 explosion, never to be resettled.
Q 02Which abandoned Namib Desert diamond-mining town has been reclaimed by the sands?
Kolmanskop
The desert is moving back in. Kolmanskop, Afrikaans for Coleman's peak, boomed after diamonds were found in 1908, was abandoned in 1956 as reserves ran dry, and the dunes have been filling its houses ever since.
Q 03Which industry built up, then emptied, Japan's Hashima Island, 'Battleship Island'?
Coal Mining
The mines ran under the sea. Mitsubishi's undersea coal mining, begun in 1887, crowded Hashima to 5,259 people by 1959; when the coal neared depletion in 1974 the mine closed and all residents departed.
Q 04Which medieval hill town in Italy's Basilicata region was evacuated from 1963 after landslides, then finished off by the 1980 Irpinia earthquake?
Craco
Craco was emptied by the ground itself. Landslides, partly triggered by faulty infrastructure, began its evacuation in 1963, and the 1980 Irpinia earthquake sealed its abandonment, leaving a ghost town on the hill.
Q 05Which Pennsylvania town was largely abandoned because of an underground coal-seam fire that has burned since 1962?
Centralia
Centralia's fire has outlived the town. A coal seam under the borough has burned since 1962; the ground sank, fumes rose, and the population fell from 1,000 in 1980 to five by 2020.
Q 06Which European capital is home to the abandoned Spreepark amusement park?
Berlin
It opened in 1969 in East Berlin and, after reunification, limped on until 2002, when the operator's legal troubles shut it.
Q 07Which Philadelphia prison, open from 1829 to 1971, pioneered solitary-confinement rehabilitation in a radial plan copied by 300 prisons?
Eastern State Penitentiary
Solitude was meant to be the cure. Eastern State Penitentiary's 'Pennsylvania system' kept inmates separate to rehabilitate them, and its radial floor plan became the model for over 300 prisons worldwide.
Q 08On which island is Varosha, the once-glamorous beach resort fenced off and empty since 1974?
Cyprus
Varosha is on Cyprus, beside Famagusta. Its Greek Cypriot residents fled the Turkish invasion of 1974, and the Turkish army fenced the resort quarter off that August, leaving its hotels empty.
Q 09Which mineral was mined at Wittenoom, the contaminated Western Australian ghost town?
Blue asbestos
Blue asbestos (crocidolite) was mined at Wittenoom until 1966. It was Australia's only blue asbestos mine, left roughly 46,840 hectares contaminated, and the town was formally degazetted in 2007.
Q 10Houtouwan, an abandoned fishing village overgrown with vegetation, lies about 64 km east of which city?
Shanghai
Houtouwan sits on Shengshan Island in the Shengsi archipelago, about 64 km east of Shanghai. Its fishing families left for the mainland in the 1990s, and vines have since swallowed the houses.
Q 11The saucer-shaped Buzludzha monument, opened in 1981, was built by which country's communist government?
Bulgaria
Buzludzha was built by Bulgaria's communist government as a Communist Party memorial house and opened in August 1981 on a Balkan Mountains peak near Kazanlak; it was abandoned after 1989.
Q 12Kayakoy, a hillside of stone houses emptied by the 1923 population exchange, is in which country?
Turkey
The treaty behind the exchange permanently barred its Greek Orthodox residents from returning to their homes.
Q 13Which city was purpose-built after 1986 to house Chernobyl plant workers displaced by the disaster?
Slavutych
Slavutych was built from 1986 to 1988 about 50 km east of the plant to house Chernobyl workers and their families, whose old city beside the reactor could never be resettled.
Q 21Which Texas port, destroyed by hurricanes in 1875 and 1886, was abandoned rather than rebuilt?
Indianola
Indianola on Matagorda Bay was a major Gulf port and German immigrant gateway until the hurricanes of 1875 and 1886 flattened it; survivors moved inland and the county seat went to Port Lavaca.
Q 22How many inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane were massacred by the Waffen-SS on 10 June 1944?
642
The Waffen-SS killed 642 villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane on 10 June 1944, among them 207 children; Charles de Gaulle ordered the ruined village kept as a permanent memorial.
Q 23The SS division responsible for the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre was which?
Das Reich
The 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich carried out the massacre on 10 June 1944: a company of its Der Führer regiment under Adolf Diekmann burned the village as the division moved north toward Normandy.
Q 14The Ferris wheel in Chernobyl's abandoned amusement park had been scheduled to open officially when?
Five days after the disaster
It never opened, but is now the most photographed object in the dead city.
Q 15Which atoll's 167 residents were moved in 1946 to make way for US nuclear tests?
Bikini Atoll
Bikini Atoll's 167 islanders were moved to Rongerik in March 1946 before Operation Crossroads; 23 nuclear tests followed through 1958, and a 1970s return was reversed when residents absorbed caesium-137.
Q 16Hashima Island's mine was approved as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2015 as part of which series?
Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution
Hashima was inscribed in 2015 within 'Sites of Japan's Meiji Industrial Revolution', a 23-site series; South Korea withdrew its objection after Japan agreed to acknowledge wartime forced labour on the island.
Q 17Which Aragonese town's Civil War ruins did Franco order left standing beside a rebuilt new town?
Belchite
Belchite was destroyed in the August–September 1937 battle; Franco ordered the old town left in ruins as a memorial and a new Belchite built alongside, completed in 1954.
Q 18In what year did the USPS discontinue Centralia, Pennsylvania's ZIP code after the mine fire emptied it?
2002
The USPS revoked Centralia's ZIP code, 17927, in 2002. Under a 2013 settlement the handful of remaining residents may stay for life, after which their homes pass to the state.
Q 19California's ghost town of Bodie is preserved in a state of what?
Arrested decay
California keeps Bodie in 'arrested decay': since it became a State Historic Park in 1962, its surviving buildings have been stabilised but never restored, so they look as they did when abandoned.
Q 20What became of W. S. Bodey, the prospector after whom Bodie was named?
He died in a blizzard before the town rose
Bodey found gold there in 1859 but died in a November blizzard that year, before any town rose; a sign painter's spelling of 'Bodie Stables' later fixed the name.
Q 24The fenced-off resort quarter of Famagusta takes its name from a Turkish word meaning what?
Suburb
Varosha comes from Turkish 'varoş', meaning suburb. Its Greek Cypriot residents fled the 1974 invasion, the army fenced the quarter off, and a stretch of it reopened to visitors only in October 2020.
Q 25Which gold-rush ghost town was the first capital of Montana Territory in 1864?
Bannack
Bannack, site of Montana's first major gold strike in 1862, was the territory's first capital in 1864–65 before the seat moved to Virginia City; it emptied as the gold ran out and became a state park in 1954.
Q 26Founded in 1872 when the land was still Peru's, Chile's Humberstone and Santa Laura ghost-town works refined which commodity?
Saltpeter
Chile went to war for this stuff. Humberstone and Santa Laura refined saltpeter in the Atacama from 1872, when the area still belonged to Peru, and the abandoned works became a World Heritage Site in 2005.
Q 27How tall is Pyongyang's unfinished pyramid-shaped Ryugyong Hotel?
330 metres
The Ryugyong Hotel rises 330 metres over 105 floors. Construction began in 1987, stalled in 1992, the exterior was finally glazed in 2011, and an LED display was added in 2018.
Q 28Work on the Ryugyong Hotel halted in 1992 for what reason?
Economic crisis after the USSR collapsed
It stood topped out but windowless for 16 years before the exterior was finished in 2011.
Q 29The wreck of the SS Ayrfield in Sydney's Homebush Bay is nicknamed what?
The floating forest
Mangroves sprout from the rusting hull of the SS Ayrfield, a collier towed to Homebush Bay for breaking up in 1972, which earned the wreck the nickname 'the floating forest'.
Q 30From 1776, the Venetian island of Poveglia served as what?
A quarantine station
Poveglia became a quarantine station under Venice's public health office from 1776, isolating plague ships; it later housed a psychiatric hospital and then a nursing home that closed in 1968.