Alps Trivia
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57 free Alps trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Alps trivia quiz covers the mountain range that runs 1,200 km from Nice to Vienna, and it goes well beyond naming the highest peak. The easy questions handle Mont Blanc's height, the highest mountains in Germany and Austria, Ötzi the Iceman and the author of Heidi. From there it moves into the passes Hannibal and Napoleon crossed, the lowest and highest road passes, the Gotthard Base Tunnel and the railway that climbs inside the Eiger. The harder end is for mountaineers, geographers and pub-quiz regulars: who reached the top of Mont Blanc in 1786, how many climbers died on the first Matterhorn descent, which national park saved the ibex, why the word 'alp' does not mean a mountain at all, and which naturalist worked out that the whole range was once buried in ice. Wildlife, wildflowers, cheese, Romantic poets and the alphorn all get their turn. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the Alps and the individual peaks, passes, animals and people involved, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our Switzerland, Austria and mountains quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 57 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Alps' 1,200 km arc ends on the outskirts of which Danube city?
Vienna
Vienna marks the end of the arc: the Vienna Woods on the city's western edge are the north-eastern foothills of the Alps.
Q 02Liechtenstein lies entirely in the Alps, but which other microstate also counts as an Alpine country?
Monaco
Monaco signed the Alpine Convention in 1994, and its entire two square kilometres fall inside the treaty's map of the range, just as all of Liechtenstein does.
Q 03The hikers who found Ötzi the Iceman in 1991 first took him for what?
Modern mountaineer
A modern mountaineer killed in an accident was the first guess; five days later an Innsbruck archaeologist judged the body at least 4,000 years old, and it proved older still.
Q 04Ötzi was found just inside Italy, so which city's museum has displayed him since 1998?
Bolzano
Bolzano won a border dispute by a whisker: a survey put the find 92.56 metres inside Italy, because the frontier had been drawn across deep snow and missed the true watershed.
Q 05Ötzi died long before the Bronze Age, carrying an axe with a blade of almost pure what?
Copper
Copper made up 99.7% of the blade, and its ore came not from the Alps but from southern Tuscany.
Q 06Ötzi's death was blamed on an accident until a 2001 X-ray revealed what?
An arrowhead in his shoulder
An arrowhead in his shoulder had cut an artery, so he bled to death within minutes; the shaft had been pulled out, leaving only the flint tip behind.
Q 07Hannibal, who famously marched war elephants over the Alps to attack Rome, commanded the army of which ancient city?
Carthage
Carthage's general set out with nearly 40 elephants; hardly any outlived the first winter in Italy, yet two years later he destroyed a Roman army at Cannae.
Q 08Hannibal's crossing of the Alps was part of which conflict?
Second Punic War
The Second Punic War began when Hannibal stormed Saguntum, a Spanish ally of Rome, and he crossed the Alps to carry the fight into Italy itself.
Q 09The first Winter Olympics, in 1924, were held in which Alpine resort?
Chamonix
Chamonix actually hosted an 'International Winter Sports Week'; it went so well that the IOC afterwards created the Winter Olympics and counted that week as the first.
Q 10Why does Mont Blanc's official height rise and fall between surveys?
A summit ice cap
A summit ice cap sits over the rock, so surveyors have climbed it every two years since 2001; the 2023 survey found 4,805.59 m, more than two metres down on 2021.
Q 11Which instrument did Mont Blanc's first climbers carry up in 1786 to measure its height?
Barometer
A barometer went up because the climb was driven by science: a Geneva naturalist had offered a reward to whoever first reached the top.
Q 12Jacques Balmat made the first ascent of Mont Blanc alongside which doctor?
Michel-Gabriel Paccard
Michel-Gabriel Paccard was long denied his due: a jealous rival who had failed on the mountain published a biased account, and the myth grew that Balmat alone deserved the credit.
Q 13The Mont Blanc Tunnel, opened in 1965, links France with which Italian town?
Courmayeur
Courmayeur is the Italian end of the 11.6 km tunnel; crews drilling from each country met deep under the massif in 1962 with their lines within 13 centimetres of each other.
Q 21Which pass did Napoleon cross with 40,000 troops in 1800?
Great St Bernard
The Romans had used the same crossing to reach their north-western provinces, and a hospice for travellers has stood at its summit since 1049.
Q 22Which tunnel under the Alps became the world's longest railway tunnel when it opened in 2016?
Gotthard Base Tunnel
Gotthard Base Tunnel runs 57 km through the base of the mountains with almost no gradient, built to shift freight crossing Switzerland from trucks onto trains.
Q 23Which pale Alpine range in north-eastern Italy is named after an 18th-century French geologist?
Dolomites
Q 14What caused the 1999 disaster inside the Mont Blanc Tunnel?
A truck caught fire
A truck caught fire halfway through, and its cargo of margarine and flour fed a blaze that killed 39 people and kept the tunnel shut for three years.
Q 15Who led the party that made the first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865?
Edward Whymper
Edward Whymper, a London engraver, won a race: an Italian party led by his former climbing partner was still working up the far side when he reached the top on 14 July 1865.
Q 16On the Italian side, the Matterhorn is known by what name?
Cervino
Cervino descends from the peak's old Latin name, Mons Silvius or Silvanus, often read as 'wooded mountain'; it wore down to Servin, and the later C spelling invites a false link to deer (cervo).
Q 17Which is the largest glacier in the Alps?
Aletsch
Aletsch forms where several ice streams merge at Konkordiaplatz into one river of ice more than 20 km long and about 900 metres thick at its deepest.
Q 18Heinrich Harrer's classic book about climbing the Eiger's north face is called what?
The White Spider
The White Spider is an ice field near the top of the wall whose gullies spread like legs; Harrer crossed it on the first ascent without any crampons.
Q 19The Eiger and Mönch are popularly rendered as the Ogre and the Monk, so what does their neighbour Jungfrau mean?
Virgin
Virgin, or maiden, is the German meaning, and the name most likely comes from the nuns of Interlaken, who owned the alpine meadow facing the mountain's north side.
Q 20The Jungfrau Railway reaches Europe's highest station mostly by what route?
A mountain tunnel
Inside a mountain tunnel bored through the Eiger and the Mönch: the line took 16 years to build, opened in 1912 and is sheltered from snow and storms most of the way up.
Dolomites honours Déodat de Dolomieu, who described their magnesium-rich rock in 1791; locals had called them the Pale Mountains, and UNESCO listed them in 2009.
Q 24Which French pass is the highest paved road pass in the Alps?
Col de l'Iseran
Col de l'Iseran turned the 2019 Tour de France: a hailstorm and mudslide halted the stage beyond it, times were taken at the summit, and Egan Bernal took the yellow jersey he kept to Paris.
Q 25Which Italian pass climbs its northern ramp through 48 numbered hairpin bends?
Stelvio Pass
Stelvio Pass got its road in the 1820s, when the Austrian Empire built it to reach Lombardy; the Giro d'Italia first crossed it in 1953.
Q 26Which pass carries the E45 motorway between Innsbruck and South Tyrol, a trade route since Roman times?
Brenner
Brenner is one of the lowest crossings of the main Alpine chain at about 1,370 m and stays open all year; the railway finished over it in 1867 needed no major tunnel.
Q 27What is the highest mountain in Germany?
Zugspitze
Zugspitze rises to 2,962 m on the Austrian border; an army lieutenant surveying the region made the first recorded ascent in 1820, and cable cars from both countries now reach the top.
Q 28What is the highest mountain in Austria?
Grossglockner
Grossglockner reaches 3,798 m and towers over the Pasterze, Austria's longest glacier; a prince-bishop organised the expedition that first climbed it in 1800.
Q 29Which mountain appears on the flag and coat of arms of Slovenia?
Triglav
Triglav, usually read as 'three-headed', is Slovenia's highest peak; in 1895 a village priest bought its summit for one florin and put up the small metal tower that still stands there.
Q 30Which peak is the highest in the Eastern Alps?
Piz Bernina
Piz Bernina is the only peak above 4,000 m in the Eastern Alps; Johann Coaz, the surveyor who made the first ascent in 1850, also gave the mountain its name.