60 free Athens trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Athens has 3,400 years of recorded history and this quiz uses most of them. It begins with the myth of Athena's olive tree and Poseidon's spring, moves through Cleisthenes' democracy, Marathon and Salamis, Pericles' building programme, ostracism and the Peloponnesian War, and then follows the city into obscurity: Justinian closing the philosophy schools in 529, the Frankish dukes, Mehmed II riding in in 1458, the Venetian shell that blew up the Parthenon in 1687, and Lord Elgin's crates. The modern city gets equal time: King Otto's Bavarian planners and a capital of 4,000 people, the 1896 Games in the marble Panathenaic Stadium, the 1922 refugees who brought rebetiko, the smog years, the 2004 Olympics and the metro that doubles as an archaeological museum. Landmarks include the Acropolis and its museum, the Erechtheion's Caryatids, Hadrian's Temple of Olympian Zeus, Lycabettus, Syntagma and the Evzones, Plaka and Anafiotika, Piraeus and the football derby of the eternal enemies. There is also Europe's record temperature and the world's biggest count of theatre stages. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Athens and its monuments, events and institutions, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Our Ancient Greece and Greece quizzes go wider.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the founding myth, Athena won patronage of the city by giving Athenians what?
The first domesticated olive tree
Poseidon offered a salt spring (or, in Virgil, a horse); the city's legendary founder-king judged the contest.
Q 02How do modern scholars think Athens and Athena got their matching names?
The deity was named after the place
The ending -ene is common in place names but rare in personal names; the root is probably pre-Greek.
Q 03Ancient Athenians were nicknamed Tettigophoroi, meaning wearers of what?
Golden cicada pins
The insect symbolised being earth-born, like the legendary founder Erechtheus, and being musical.
Q 04Who introduced democracy to Athens in 508 BC?
Cleisthenes
Solon's reforms had paved the way a century earlier; Cleisthenes reorganised citizens into ten tribes by residence rather than wealth.
Q 05Which Athenian general led the victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC?
Miltiades
Themistocles won the crucial sea battle at Salamis ten years later; the Persians still sacked Athens twice.
Q 06Which statesman guided the building programme that produced the Parthenon?
Pericles
The tensions his empire caused led to the Peloponnesian War of 431-404 BC, which Athens lost to Sparta.
Q 07What was ostracism in Athenian democracy?
Exiling citizens seen as threats to the state
Citizens scratched names on potsherds; it let the Assembly restrain powerful men without harsher punishment.
Q 08Construction of the Parthenon began in which year?
447 BC
It was finished in 438 BC with decoration continuing to 432 BC, at the height of the Delian League's power.
Q 09The Acropolis rock rises how far above sea level?
150 m
Its flat top covers about 3 hectares and held a Mycenaean fortress before the temples.
Q 10What is the monumental gateway at the western end of the Acropolis called?
The Propylaea
Mnesicles began it in 437 BC in Pentelic stone; the tiny Temple of Athena Nike stands beside it.
Q 11The Erechtheion's Porch of the Maidens is held up by how many sculpted female figures?
Six
One Caryatid was removed by Elgin's agents and is in the British Museum; the others are in the Acropolis Museum with replicas on the building.
Q 12The Parthenon was badly damaged in 1687 when a Venetian bomb hit what inside it?
An Ottoman munitions store
The Ottomans had turned the temple-turned-mosque into a powder magazine during Morosini's siege.
Q 13Roughly what share of the surviving Parthenon sculptures did Elgin's agents remove between 1801 and 1812?
About half
A parliamentary inquiry in 1816 ruled the acquisition legal; Greece still campaigns for their return from the British Museum.
Q 21Which Greek won the marathon at the 1896 Olympics, to the delight of the home crowd?
Spyridon Louis
The Panathenaic Stadium overflowed with what was then the largest crowd ever to watch a sporting event.
Q 22The marathon race takes its name from the legend of which Greek messenger?
Pheidippides
He supposedly ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens in 490 BC; the story's historical accuracy is disputed.
Q 23Athens hosted the Summer Olympics for the second time in which year?
2004
It had lost the centenary Games to Atlanta; the 2004 Games cost the Greek government nearly 9 billion euros.
Q 14Which Roman emperor finished Athens' Temple of Olympian Zeus some 638 years after it began?
Hadrian
It had 104 colossal columns and was the largest temple in Greece; 16 columns still stand.
Q 15Which emperor's 529 ban on pagan philosophy teaching is usually taken as the end of ancient Athens?
Justinian I
Athens had remained a centre of Neoplatonism, teaching Julian the Apostate among others.
Q 16Which sultan captured Athens in 1458 and forbade the looting of its monuments on pain of death?
Mehmed II
Under Ottoman rule the city shrank to what one historian called a small country town.
Q 17Athens replaced which city as capital of independent Greece in 1834?
Nafplio
The choice was sentimental: war had reduced Athens to about 4,000 people huddled below the Acropolis.
Q 18Greece's first king, who commissioned a modern city plan for Athens, came from which country?
Bavaria
King Otto hired Kleanthis and Schaubert; the neoclassical 'Athens Trilogy' of university, library and academy followed.
Q 19The Panathenaic Stadium is the only stadium in the world built entirely of what?
Marble
Herodes Atticus rebuilt it by 144 AD; Greeks call it the Kallimarmaro.
Q 20The first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens on which date?
6 April 1896
American James Connolly won the triple jump that day, becoming the first Olympic champion in 1,500 years.
Q 24Which architect added steel arches and a glass roof to the Athens Olympic Stadium for 2004?
Santiago Calatrava
The stadium had already hosted Champions League finals in 1994 and 2007.
Q 25What did the 1922 refugees from Asia Minor bring to Athens that later became the basis of Greek popular music?
Rebetiko
They settled in poor districts after the population exchange with Turkey and swelled the city's numbers.
Q 26What are the kilted Greek presidential guards outside Parliament at Syntagma called?
Evzones
The kilt is the fustanella; the 1837 uniform was modelled on the dress of the War of Independence fighters.
Q 27Which hill is the highest point in central Athens at 277 m?
Lycabettus
Myth says Athena dropped it there while carrying a mountain to build the Acropolis; a cable car runs to St George's chapel on top.
Q 28Which is the tallest of the four mountains ringing the Athens basin, at 1,413 m?
Parnitha
It is a national park; a 2007 fire burned much of its forest, which helps clean the city's air.
Q 29Plaka, below the Acropolis, is described as what?
The oldest district of Athens
It has been inhabited since the Neolithic; Anafiotika within it was built like a Cycladic village by settlers from Anafi.
Q 30Piraeus, Athens's harbour town, ranks how in Europe for passenger traffic?
Second-busiest
It is also the thirteenth-largest container port in the world after heavy investment by China's COSCO.