Amsterdam Trivia
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50 free Amsterdam trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
47 free Amsterdam trivia questions with answers. Amsterdam is a city of 1,500 bridges, nearly a million people and about as many bicycles, and this quiz covers the whole of it. You get the history (a dam on a river, herring money, the Golden Age, the world's first stock exchange, the wartime years), the sights (the canal ring, Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum, Anne Frank House, Dam Square, the Skinny Bridge) and the living city: Ajax, Heineken, King's Day, Pride's canal parade and the rules on where you can and cannot smoke. It is written for travellers planning a trip, people who have just come back from one, Dutch expats and pub-quiz hosts who want a geography round with real bite. Questions run from easy to hard so a mixed table can play together. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and each question carries its source, so if a fact surprises you, you can go and read where it came from.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Amsterdam is the Dutch capital, but the government and parliament sit in which city?
The Hague
The arrangement is written into the constitution. Even in the Dutch Republic, Amsterdam was neither the capital nor the seat of government while being by far the richest city.
Q 02Why do many old Amsterdam canal houses have a beam and hook jutting out from the top of the gable?
To hoist goods upstairs
To hoist goods upstairs: the houses are narrow with very steep stairs, so merchants winched stock up to attic stores from outside, and the pulleys still come in handy for furniture.
Q 03Amsterdam sits in which Dutch province?
North Holland
North Holland: the national capital is not even the capital of its own province, which is governed from Haarlem. The province dates from 1840, when Holland was split into north and south.
Q 04Amsterdam's Golden Age boom took off after Spanish troops captured which rival port in 1585?
Antwerp
Antwerp: it had been the dominant port of the Low Countries, and when it fell its Protestant merchants fled north while the Dutch blockaded its river, handing Amsterdam the trade.
Q 05Founded in 1602, what Amsterdam institution is considered the world's oldest 'modern' one of its kind?
Its stock exchange
Its stock exchange: it grew out of dealing in the shares of a single spice-trading company, and it is still running four centuries later as Euronext Amsterdam.
Q 06Which trading company, run from Amsterdam, is often called the world's first multinational corporation?
The Dutch East India Company
The Dutch East India Company, or VOC, behaved almost like a state: its charter let it sign treaties, build forts and keep its own army in Asia.
Q 07Many old cargo ships moored along Amsterdam's canals now serve as what?
Houseboats
Houseboats began as cheap housing, often old cargo vessels converted when homes were scarce. With moorings now limited, living on one has become expensive.
Q 08What does the name of Amsterdam's Keizersgracht mean in English?
Emperor's Canal
Emperor's Canal honours Maximilian I, who let Amsterdam top its coat of arms with his crown in thanks for the city's loans. The crown from the arms also caps the Westerkerk tower.
Q 09What nickname does Amsterdam share with several other canal cities?
Venice of the North
Venice of the North is also claimed by Stockholm, Bruges and St Petersburg. Amsterdam's canal ring was no accident of geography: it was dug to a single plan that drained swampland to extend the city.
Q 10Amsterdam's water authority fishes about 12,000 to 15,000 of what out of the canals every year?
Bicycles
Bicycles are the main catch of the water authority's dredging crews. They blame theft and vandalism, reasoning that owners rarely throw their own bikes in.
Q 11The 1960s counterculture group Provo proposed which famous scheme for Amsterdam?
A free White Bicycle plan
A free White Bicycle plan left white-painted bikes unlocked around Amsterdam for anyone to ride, but police quickly removed them. The idea went on to inspire bike-share schemes around the world.
Q 12Which artist, most associated with Amsterdam, was buried in the Westerkerk in 1669?
Rembrandt
Rembrandt was buried in the Westerkerk, but no one now knows exactly where, so the church honours him with a memorial plaque on its north wall.
Q 13The Rijksmuseum's star 1642 group portrait of a civic militia company is commonly known as what?
The Night Watch
Q 21Which Dam Square landmark was built in the 1650s as Amsterdam's city hall?
The Royal Palace
The Royal Palace served as the city hall for 150 years, until Louis Bonaparte, made king of Holland by his brother Napoleon, took it as his residence in 1808.
Q 22Het Houten Huys, one of central Amsterdam's last two wooden-fronted houses, stands in which enclosed courtyard?
The Begijnhof
The Begijnhof was built for the beguines, Catholic women who lived like nuns but took no monastic vows, so any of them was free to leave and marry.
Q 23A popular theory traces the name of Amsterdam's Jordaan district to which French word?
Jardin (garden)
The Night Watch is not a night scene at all: thick, darkened varnish made the daytime militia portrait look nocturnal, and the mistaken nickname stuck. Its formal title names Captain Frans Banninck Cocq.
Q 14Which other Amsterdam landmark did Rijksmuseum architect Pierre Cuypers design in a matching style?
Centraal station
Centraal station opened in 1889 on artificial islands raised in the IJ, so the city's main rail hub stands where open harbour water used to be.
Q 15The Stedelijk Museum's smooth white wing, opened in 2012, was quickly nicknamed what?
The Bathtub
The Bathtub looks just like one: a smooth white tub raised on legs, with the modern art museum's entrance moved underneath it.
Q 16Which painter's works stayed in his brother's family for decades before becoming the core of an Amsterdam museum in 1973?
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh's works passed to his brother Theo's family, and in 1962 his nephew handed them to a foundation with the Dutch state's help. The museum built for them opened in 1973.
Q 17The Anne Frank House museum preserves the Secret Annex at number 263 of which canal?
Prinsengracht
Prinsengracht 263 was nearly demolished in the 1950s to make way for a factory, until a campaign by Amsterdam citizens saved it. It opened as a museum in 1960.
Q 18Of the eight people who hid in the Secret Annex, who was the only one to survive the camps?
Otto Frank
Otto Frank returned to Amsterdam, where helper Miep Gies handed him the papers she had saved from the annex. He published them as Anne's diary in 1947.
Q 19Who gave Amsterdam its motto, 'Heroic, Determined, Merciful', to honour its conduct under German occupation?
Queen Wilhelmina
Queen Wilhelmina's motto honours Amsterdammers' conduct in the war. In the February Strike of 1941 they walked out in protest at the persecution of the city's Jews.
Q 20The three X-shaped crosses on Amsterdam's flag and coat of arms are which saint's crosses?
St Andrew's
St Andrew's crosses probably came from the shield of the Persijn family, knights who once held land around Amsterdam. They are no nod to the city's patron saint, who is St Nicholas.
Jardin (garden) suits a district whose streets are named after trees and flowers, but Dutch place-name dictionaries prefer another story: a joking biblical nickname, the Jordan, for the canal at its edge.
Q 24The Amsterdam park opened in 1865 as the 'New Park' was soon renamed after which Dutch writer?
Joost van den Vondel
Joost van den Vondel, the poet and playwright, got a bronze statue in the park in 1867, two years after it opened, and the New Park took its new name from the statue.
Q 25What did three straight European Cup wins from 1971 to 1973 earn Amsterdam's Ajax?
The trophy to keep
The trophy to keep: a rule gave the original to any club winning three years running or five times in all, so a new cup had to be made. Ajax's fourth title came in 1995.
Q 26Amsterdam's stadium, opened in 1996 as the Amsterdam ArenA, was renamed in 2018 after whom?
Johan Cruyff
Johan Cruyff grew up minutes from his boyhood club's old ground, where his widowed mother worked as a cleaner. The arena took his name two years after his death in 2016.
Q 27Which drinks brand first sponsored the Olympics at the 1928 Amsterdam Games?
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola's deal with the 1928 Games is also how the drink reached the Netherlands: the first bottles sold in the country came over for the Olympics.
Q 28Which beer brand began when a 22-year-old bought Amsterdam's Haystack brewery in 1864?
Heineken
Heineken was new in 1864 but its brewery was not: De Hooiberg, the Haystack, had been making beer in Amsterdam since 1592 when Gerard Adriaan Heineken took it over.
Q 29Which Amsterdam market has floated on the Singel canal since 1862?
The Bloemenmarkt
The Bloemenmarkt, billed as the world's only floating flower market, floats because nurseries outside the city once shipped their plants in by water every day and sold them straight from the boats.
Q 30Amsterdam's Homomonument, three pink granite triangles unveiled in 1987, remembers whom?
Gays and lesbians persecuted by the Nazis
Gays and lesbians persecuted by the Nazis inspired it: the memorial grew out of a 1970 protest in which activists were arrested for trying to lay a wreath for them at the Dam Square war memorial.