50 free Armenia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Armenia was the first state on earth to adopt Christianity, in AD 301, and its alphabet, its cross-stones and its churches have carried an identity through empires, partitions and the genocide of 1915. This quiz covers the country from Urartu and Yerevan's founding in 782 BC through Tigranes the Great, Gregory the Illuminator, Mesrop Mashtots and the Bagratids to the First Republic of 1918, Soviet rule, the Spitak earthquake, independence in 1991, the wars over Nagorno-Karabakh, the Velvet Revolution and the 2025 peace declaration. Geography and culture get their share: Mount Aragats and Lake Sevan, Ararat as the symbol across the border, the world's oldest leather shoe and oldest winery at Areni, lavash and the duduk on UNESCO's lists, khachkars, Ararat brandy, apricots, Etchmiadzin, Geghard, Garni and the Wings of Tatev cableway. There are questions on chess champions Petrosian and Aronian, Khachaturian's Sabre Dance, Aznavour, the diaspora, the dram and the Yerevan Metro. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Armenia, its history, sites and people, so the dates, heights and names are reliable.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Armenia is a landlocked country bordered by Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran and which country to the west?
Turkey
Azerbaijan's Nakhchivan exclave also touches it to the south.
Q 02In AD 301 Armenia became the first state in the world to do what?
Adopt Christianity as its official religion
King Tiridates III was converted by Gregory the Illuminator, partly in defiance of Sasanian Persia.
Q 03What is the native name Armenians use for their country?
Hayastan
It comes from Hayk, the legendary patriarch said to be a great-great-grandson of Noah.
Q 04Which state, established in 860 BC, is considered the first Armenian state?
Urartu
It fell in the 6th century BC and was replaced by the Persian Satrapy of Armenia.
Q 05Yerevan traces its founding to the fortress of Erebuni, built in 782 BC by which Urartian king?
Argishti I
A cuneiform inscription found in the city records the date, making Yerevan older than Rome.
Q 06Under which king, between 95 and 66 BC, was Armenia the most powerful kingdom east of the Roman Republic?
Tigranes the Great
The Artaxiad dynasty had won full independence from the Seleucids in 190 BC.
Q 07Which two apostles are credited with first bringing Christianity to Armenia in the 1st century?
Thaddaeus and Bartholomew
The Armenian Apostolic Church is regarded as the world's oldest national church.
Q 08Who invented the Armenian alphabet around AD 405?
Mesrop Mashtots
It originally had 36 letters and now has 39; the word for alphabet, aybuben, comes from its first two letters.
Q 09The Armenian mother church at Vagharshapat (301-303) is often called the world's oldest what?
Cathedral
It stands in the town now known as Etchmiadzin.
Q 10The Bagratid Kingdom of Armenia, restored in the 9th century, fell in which year?
1045
Ashot I had regained independence from the Abbasids in 884.
Q 11Cilician Armenia, an ally of the Crusaders, lay on the coast of which sea?
The Mediterranean
It saw itself as a bastion of Christendom in the East.
Q 12Which two empires divided the Armenian homeland between them from the 16th century?
The Ottoman and Persian
Russia took Eastern Armenia from Qajar Iran by the treaties of 1813 and 1828.
Q 13Up to how many Armenians were killed in the genocide that began in 1915?
1.5 million
It began with the arrest of intellectuals in Constantinople on 24 April 1915, now the annual day of remembrance.
Q 21In August 2025 Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev signed a peace declaration at which venue?
The White House
It committed both countries to end nearly four decades of conflict.
Q 22Mount Aragats, Armenia's highest point, rises to what height?
4,090 m
No point in the country lies below 390 m, and 85.9% of it is mountainous.
Q 23Mount Ararat, Armenia's national symbol, is depicted on the country's coat of arms along with what?
Noah's Ark
The mountain forms a near-quadripoint of Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Nakhchivan.
Lake Sevan sits at 1,900 metres and is the largest body of water in which region?
Q 14Which Ottoman leader ordered the death marches of 1915-16 into the Syrian desert?
Talaat Pasha
Turkish authorities deny to this day that the killings were genocide.
Q 15The First Republic of Armenia declared independence on 28 May of which year?
1918
It was absorbed into the Soviet Union as the Armenian SSR by 1920.
Q 16Modern Armenia declared independence from the Soviet Union on which date in 1991?
21 September
It followed the failed August coup in Moscow.
Q 17The 1988 earthquake centred on Spitak killed between 25,000 and 50,000 people; what was its magnitude?
6.8
Charles Aznavour set up his charity Aznavour for Armenia in response.
Q 18Which neighbour closed its border with Armenia in 1993, citing the first Nagorno-Karabakh war?
The one to the west
Turkey closed it; protocols to reopen it were signed in 2009 but never took effect.
Q 19Azerbaijan reincorporated the breakaway Republic of Artsakh after an offensive in which year?
2023
The September offensive followed a months-long siege; the region's Armenians fled.
Q 20Nikol Pashinyan came to power in 2018 after protests he called what?
A velvet revolution
Serzh Sargsyan resigned and parliament elected Pashinyan prime minister in May 2018.
The Caucasus
Its basin covers a sixth of Armenia's territory.
Q 25What is Armenia's currency, introduced in 1993?
The dram
It suffered hyperinflation in its first years and was subdivided into 100 luma.
Q 26What was Armenia's population in 2025?
About 3.1 million
It peaked at 3.6 million in 1991 and had fallen through emigration to about 3.1 million by 2025.
Q 27The Areni-1 cave complex yielded the world's oldest known leather shoe and oldest known what?
Winery
The 5,500-year-old shoe and the 6,100-year-old winery were found in Vayots Dzor.
Q 28Which Armenian flatbread was inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2014?
Lavash
It is baked in a tonir or tandoor clay oven.
Q 29The duduk, Armenia's mournful double-reed instrument, is made from the wood of which tree?
Apricot
Djivan Gasparyan played it on the soundtracks of Gladiator and Blood Diamond.
Q 30What is a khachkar?
A carved memorial cross-stone
The largest cemetery of them, at Julfa in Nakhchivan, once held about 10,000.