Asian Capital Cities
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50 free Asian Capital Cities trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Asia is the largest continent, and its capitals range from the instantly familiar to the surprisingly hard to place. In several countries the biggest, best-known city is not the capital at all. Others built a new capital from scratch within living memory, and a few have renamed theirs more than once. This quiz covers Asian countries and their capitals in both directions. Most questions name a country and ask for its capital; some name a capital and ask which country it belongs to. Every question carries a clue, such as an old name, a river, a landmark or a founding story, so there is always something to reason from. The opening questions cover the capitals most people know, and later ones move on to Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Gulf states and the smaller island nations. It suits students revising a map of Asia, quiz hosts who need a ready-made geography round, and anyone who wants the capitals to stick. Each answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something, and the questions can be printed for use on paper.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city, whose 168-letter ceremonial name is the world's longest place name, is the capital of Thailand?
Bangkok
Bangkok is known to Thais as Krung Thep, the opening words of a ceremonial title that Guinness World Records lists at 168 letters.
Q 02Which city, known as Edo until it was renamed in 1868, is the capital of Japan?
Tokyo
Tokyo means 'Eastern Capital', a name it took when the imperial court moved there. As Edo it had already grown from a fishing village to more than a million people.
Q 03Which Chinese city, the national capital, was given a name meaning 'Northern Capital' in 1403?
Beijing
Beijing was named under the Ming dynasty to tell it apart from Nanjing, the 'Southern Capital'. Work on the Forbidden City began three years later.
Q 04Which city, home to the hilltop mausoleum of Atatürk, became the capital of Turkey in 1923?
Ankara
Ankara took over from Istanbul, the old Ottoman capital, when the republic was founded. It has since grown into Turkey's second-largest city.
Q 05Which city, designed by the British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, is the capital of India?
New Delhi
New Delhi was inaugurated in 1931, two decades after George V announced that the capital of British India would move from Calcutta.
Q 06Which city, built on a T-shaped island in the Persian Gulf, is the capital of the United Arab Emirates?
Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi lies less than 250 metres off the mainland and is joined to it by bridges. Neighbouring Dubai gets more attention, but the federal government sits here.
Q 07Which city, whose name is simply the native Korean word for 'capital city', is the capital of South Korea?
Seoul
Seoul was officially Hanseong under the Joseon dynasty, but people so often called the capital 'the seoul' that the everyday noun became its name.
Q 08Thimphu, a national capital that manages without a single traffic light, is the capital of which country?
Bhutan
Bhutan's capital relies on traffic police who direct cars with dance-like arm movements. Thimphu took over from the old capital, Punakha, in 1955.
Q 09Which city, known as Philadelphia in ancient Greek and Roman times, is the capital of Jordan?
Amman
Amman was renamed in the 3rd century BC by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who called it after himself. First built on seven hills, the city now spreads over 19.
Q 10Which capital of Kazakhstan was renamed Nur-Sultan in 2019, then switched back to its old name in 2022?
Astana
Astana simply means 'capital city' in Kazakh. It took over from Almaty in 1997 and has also been called Akmolinsk and Tselinograd.
Q 11Which city on the Red River, once called Thăng Long or 'ascending dragon', is the capital of Vietnam?
Hanoi
Hanoi was founded as a capital in 1010 by an emperor who is said to have seen a dragon rise from the river. It later served as the capital of French Indochina.
Q 12Which city, begun by Spain in 1571 as the walled district of Intramuros, is the capital of the Philippines?
Manila
Manila lost the seat of government to neighbouring Quezon City in 1948 and was reinstated as capital in 1976. Its old nickname is the 'Pearl of the Orient'.
Q 13Which city on the island of Java, long Indonesia's capital, was called Batavia under Dutch colonial rule?
Jakarta
Jakarta was rebuilt as Batavia by the Dutch East India Company in 1619, a name taken from a Germanic people the Dutch regarded as their ancestors.
Q 21Which city, wedged into a narrow Hindu Kush valley nearly 1,800 metres up, is the capital of Afghanistan?
Kabul
Kabul was captured in 1504 by Babur, who made it his headquarters and set out from the city in 1526 on the conquest that founded the Mughal Empire.
Q 22Which city on the Buriganga River, once the hub of Bengal's muslin trade, is the capital of Bangladesh?
Dhaka
Dhaka is known for its cycle rickshaws, the city's most common transport, and UNESCO has recognised its rickshaw art as intangible cultural heritage.
Q 23Which Sri Lankan port, the country's commercial capital, sits beside the official capital Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte?
Colombo
Colombo was designated the commercial capital in 1978, when administrative functions moved out to Kotte. It remains Sri Lanka's most populous city and largest port.
Q 14Which planned city beside the Margalla Hills was built in the 1960s to be the capital of Pakistan?
Islamabad
Islamabad was laid out by the Greek architect Constantinos Doxiadis. The capital moved there from Karachi after a temporary stay in neighbouring Rawalpindi.
Q 15Which city on the Najd plateau, whose Arabic name means 'gardens', is the capital of Saudi Arabia?
Riyadh
Riyadh was named for the date orchards outside its old walls. On its outskirts lies Diriyah, the original home of the ruling House of Saud.
Q 16Which city at the foot of the Alborz mountains was chosen as the capital of Iran in 1786?
Tehran
Tehran was picked by the Qajar ruler Agha Mohammad Khan, partly to stay close to contested lands in the Caucasus.
Q 17Which city on the Tigris, founded in 762 as a circular walled capital, is the capital of Iraq?
Baghdad
Baghdad was founded by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur, who named it the 'City of Peace'. Its core, known as the Round City, was about 2 km wide.
Q 18Which city, nicknamed the 'City of Jasmine' and home to the Umayyad Mosque, is the capital of Syria?
Damascus
Damascus is counted among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Its Grand Mosque, begun in 706, is one of the oldest sites of continuous Muslim prayer.
Q 19Which city, whose Malay name means 'muddy confluence', grew from an 1850s tin-mining town into Malaysia's capital?
Kuala Lumpur
Kuala Lumpur stands where the Klang and Gombak rivers meet. It is home to Malaysia's parliament and to the Petronas Towers, the tallest twin buildings in the world.
Q 20Which city, sitting in a Himalayan valley about 1,400 metres above sea level, is the capital of Nepal?
Kathmandu
Kathmandu is said to take its name from Kasthamandap, a three-storey pavilion in the city built entirely of wood without iron nails.
Q 24Which city on the Taedong River, about 109 km upstream from the Yellow Sea, is the capital of North Korea?
Pyongyang
Pyongyang was destroyed in the Korean War and entirely rebuilt to Kim Il Sung's vision, with monuments such as the Juche Tower and the Arch of Triumph.
Q 25Which city, founded in 1639 as a nomadic monastery that moved more than 20 times, is the capital of Mongolia?
Ulaanbaatar
Ulaanbaatar settled at its present site only in 1778. Its name means 'Red Hero', and it is the coldest national capital in the world.
Q 26Which city, rebuilt as a model Soviet city after a 1966 earthquake, is the capital of Uzbekistan?
Tashkent
Tashkent lost much of its old city in the quake, and other Soviet republics helped to restore it. Its name is popularly taken to mean 'Stone City'.
Q 27Which city on a Mediterranean peninsula, once nicknamed the 'Paris of the Middle East', is the capital of Lebanon?
Beirut
Beirut earned the nickname before the Lebanese Civil War, when it was a financial and business hub. The Romans knew the city as Berytus.
Q 28Which city, cut in two by a UN buffer zone that runs through Ledra Street, is the capital of Cyprus?
Nicosia
Nicosia is divided by the Green Line, named after the colour of the pen a United Nations officer used when drawing the line on a map of the city.
Q 29Which city, standing where the Tonlé Sap river meets the Mekong, is the capital of Cambodia?
Phnom Penh
Phnom Penh is named, legend has it, for Lady Penh, a wealthy widow who raised a hill and a shrine there in 1372 for sacred objects found in a floating tree.
Q 30Which planned city, whose Burmese name means 'abode of the king', became the capital of Myanmar in 2005?
Naypyidaw
Naypyidaw officially took over from Yangon on 6 November 2005, but its name was only made public the following March, at a parade of more than 12,000 troops.