Argentina
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8correct to beat the crowd
Challenge yourself with our comprehensive Argentina trivia quiz featuring 100 free questions with answers about this vibrant South American nation. From its rich cultural heritage and tango traditions to its political history and natural wonders, this quiz covers everything you need to know about Argentina. Whether you're a geography enthusiast or simply curious about Argentine culture, discover how well you really know this fascinating country.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital city of Argentina?
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires was founded twice: the first Spanish settlement of 1536 was abandoned after attacks by local peoples, and Juan de Garay refounded the city in 1580.
Q 02Which birds come ashore by the hundred thousand each September to nest at Punta Tombo on Argentina's Atlantic coast?
Penguins
Penguins return to Punta Tombo every spring: the males land first and reclaim the very burrow they used the year before, then wait there for last year's partner.
Q 03Tango was born in the working-class port districts of Argentina's capital and which other capital across the estuary?
Montevideo
Montevideo shares the credit: UNESCO listed tango in 2009 on a joint bid by Argentina and Uruguay, as a tradition born among the urban lower classes of both capitals.
Q 04Which Argentine footballer, a 1980s hero at Napoli, was nicknamed 'El Pibe de Oro', the Golden Boy?
Diego Maradona
Diego Maradona, 'El Pibe de Oro', led Napoli to the first two league titles in its history; days after his death in 2020 the city renamed its stadium after him.
Q 05What is the official currency of Argentina?
Peso
The peso replaced the inflation-wrecked austral in the early 1990s and was pegged one-to-one to the US dollar until the peg broke in January 2002.
Q 06Whose 1808 invasion of Spain set off Argentina's revolution of 1810?
Napoleon
Napoleon forced Spain's Ferdinand VII off the throne and crowned his own brother Joseph, so with no rightful king to obey the colonists set up their own government in 1810; independence followed in 1816.
Q 07What is the highest mountain peak in Argentina, also the highest in the Americas?
Aconcagua
Aconcagua was first climbed in 1897 by the Swiss guide Matthias Zurbriggen, who reached the top alone; Edward FitzGerald, the leader of his expedition, never made the summit.
Q 08Which infused drink, shared among friends from a gourd with a metal straw, is the national beverage of Argentina?
Mate
Mate is brewed from the dried leaves of yerba mate; emigrants returning from Argentina took the habit home to Syria and Lebanon, and Syria has long been the top foreign buyer of Argentine yerba.
Q 09Which Argentine writer's labyrinthine short stories fill Ficciones and El Aleph, published in Spanish in the 1940s?
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges was made director of Argentina's National Library in 1955, just as his sight failed; he wrote a poem on the irony of being handed so many books and blindness together.
Q 10Which vast, sparsely populated region of glaciers and steppe at the southern tip of South America is shared by Argentina and Chile?
Patagonia
Patagonia is dry because the Andes block the moist westerly winds off the Pacific: the mountains' western slopes are drenched, while the plains to the east lie in a rain shadow.
Q 11Which bird, famous for building mud nests shaped like clay ovens, is the national bird of Argentina?
Rufous Hornero
A Rufous Hornero pair stays together all year and can raise its domed mud nest, shaped like an old wood-fired oven, in as little as five days.
Q 12Which Argentine first lady championed labor rights and women's suffrage in the mid-1900s?
Eva Perón
Eva Perón, 'Evita', pushed through the 1947 law giving Argentine women the vote and founded the Female Peronist Party in 1949.
Q 13Which waterfall system on the Brazil border is a major attraction of northeastern Argentina?
Iguazu Falls
Q 21Which Argentine city is famous for Swiss-style architecture, skiing and chocolate?
Bariloche
Bariloche owes much of its Alpine look to the state: between 1935 and 1940 Argentina's national parks agency put up public buildings in stone and wood, the best known the Civic Centre beside Lake Nahuel Huapi.
Q 22What is the primary grape variety used in the production of Argentina's most famous red wines?
Malbec
Malbec lost ground in Bordeaux, where a severe frost in 1956 killed many of its vines and growers replanted with other grapes, while in Argentina, where it was planted in the mid-1800s, it became the signature red.
Q 23Who was the military leader who played a crucial role in the independence of Argentina, Chile, and Peru?
José de San Martín
Iguazu Falls splits into some 275 separate drops because islands along its rim divide the river; about half the flow plunges into a single chasm, the Devil's Throat.
Q 14What name is given to Argentina's traditional cowboy, a national folk hero?
Gaucho
The gaucho hunted on horseback with boleadoras, leather-bound stones on cords thrown to tangle an animal's legs, a weapon the plains' indigenous peoples had used long before.
Q 15Which Argentine city is known as the "End of the World" due to its southernmost location?
Ushuaia
Ushuaia bills itself the 'Fin del Mundo', and its End of the World Train began as a prison railway, though Chile's small Puerto Williams lies further south.
Q 16What are Argentina's wide, fertile lowlands, known for cattle ranching, called?
Pampas
The Pampas made Argentina's fortune: once refrigerated ships could carry its beef to Europe, farm exports lifted the country into the world's ten richest nations by the early 1900s.
Q 17Which army officer is the only president of Argentina to have been elected three times?
Juan Perón
Juan Perón won the presidency in 1946, 1951 and 1973; he was overthrown in 1955, spent 18 years in exile and died in office in July 1974.
Q 18What is the traditional Argentine barbecue of meats cooked over an open fire called?
Asado
Asado names both the cooking and the gathering around it; the asador favours coals of hardwoods such as quebracho, which burn hot and slow without the resinous smoke of pine.
Q 19Which large flightless bird runs wild on the grasslands of Argentina?
Rhea
The rhea, called ñandú locally, is South America's largest bird; the greater rhea stands about 1.5 metres tall and spreads its big wings like sails when running.
Q 20What emblem sits in the centre stripe of the flag of Argentina?
Sun of May
The Sun of May, a golden sun with a human face, was added to the flag in 1818, copying the sun engraved on Argentina's first coin of 1813; it commemorates the May Revolution of 1810.
José de San Martín led an army across the Andes in 1817 to free Chile, then sailed north to Peru, where he was named Protector in 1821.
Q 24Which young naturalist dug up fossils of giant extinct mammals on Argentina's coast in the 1830s?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin dug the bones from cliffs at Punta Alta while HMS Beagle surveyed the coast, and the likeness of these extinct giants to animals still living there later helped suggest to him that species change.
Q 25Which estuary where the Uruguay and Paraná meet forms part of Argentina's border with Uruguay?
Río de la Plata
The Río de la Plata is about 220 km across at its mouth, so wide that geographers disagree on whether to call it a river, an estuary, a gulf or a sea; two national capitals face each other across it.
Q 26Which concertina-like instrument, developed in Germany, anchors tango ensembles?
Bandoneon
The bandoneon is named after the German Heinrich Band, who sold the early models; it is thought to have reached Argentina with sailors and immigrants, and tango players there made it the music's defining sound.
Q 27Which Argentine city at the foot of the Andes is the centre of the country's main wine-growing region?
Mendoza
Mendoza lies in semi-desert, so the vineyards that make most of Argentina's wine depend on irrigation canals, some dating to the 1500s, and ditches still water the trees along its city streets.
Q 28Which far north-western Argentine province, on the Bolivian border, is home to the Quebrada de Humahuaca gorge?
Jujuy
Jujuy's Quebrada de Humahuaca has been lived in for some 10,000 years and later carried the caravans of the Inca Empire, the long history for which UNESCO listed the valley in 2003.
Q 29A famous prehistoric cave in Argentina's Santa Cruz province is named for the stencils, sprayed through bone pipes, of what?
Human hands
Human hands cover the walls of the Cueva de las Manos, and nearly all are left hands, which suggests the painters held the bone spray-pipe in the right.
Q 30Which Argentine glacier is famous for the ice bridge that builds up across a lake and collapses every few years?
Perito Moreno Glacier
Perito Moreno Glacier creeps across an arm of Lake Argentino until it dams it; the trapped water rises by up to 30 metres, tunnels through the ice and leaves a bridge that finally crashes down.