Bavaria Trivia
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68 free Bavaria trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bavaria is Germany's largest state by area, its second most populous, and easily its most stubbornly distinct: it calls itself a Free State, kept its own kings until 1918, voted against the West German constitution in 1949 and still speaks a dialect with 12 million speakers. This quiz covers the whole of it, from the Roman province of Raetia and the 738-year rule of the Wittelsbachs to Kurt Eisner's revolution, the Beer Hall Putsch and the CSU. It also covers the Bavaria visitors know: Munich and its monks, Neuschwanstein and the Fairy Tale King, Oktoberfest and the 1516 beer purity law, Weisswurst and Lebkuchen, the Zugspitze and the Königssee, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Augsburg, Bamberg and Würzburg, plus BMW, Audi, Adidas, Puma and Bayern Munich. Questions run from easy (the capital) to expert (which region the golden lion on the coat of arms stands for). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Bavaria, its cities, rulers, companies and traditions, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Munich, Oktoberfest and Germany quizzes next.
30 of 68 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Bavarian culture is heavily shaped by which religious heritage?
Catholic
Catholic: when the Reformation swept through northern Germany, Bavaria's dukes kept their lands strictly loyal to Rome and made the duchy a centre of the Jesuit-led Counter-Reformation.
Q 02By area, where does Bavaria rank among Germany's 16 states?
First
First: it reached roughly its present borders in Napoleon's day, when siding with France let it expand at its neighbours' expense.
Q 03Bavaria's official name uses which title?
Free State
Free State: the word was coined as plain German for 'republic', and the revolutionaries who toppled Bavaria's king in November 1918 declared the country 'from now on a Free State'.
Q 04The Romans divided what is now southern Bavaria between which two provinces?
Raetia and Noricum
Raetia and Noricum: Rome fortified the northern frontier to keep the Germanic tribes out, and an army camp behind it grew into Augsburg, the capital of Raetia; the provinces held until the 5th century.
Q 05Which Frankish ruler deposed Bavaria's Duke Tassilo III in 788?
Charlemagne
Charlemagne: by removing Tassilo he ended more than two centuries of rule by the Agilolfings, Bavaria's earliest ducal house, and for a time made the duchy a province of his Carolingian empire.
Q 06Which family ruled Bavaria for 738 years, from 1180 to 1918?
Wittelsbach
Wittelsbach: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa gave the duchy to a loyal count, Otto of Wittelsbach, and his line held it until revolution in November 1918 drove the last king into exile without his ever formally abdicating.
Q 07Which duke, deposed by his cousin Barbarossa in 1180, is credited with founding Munich?
Henry the Lion
Henry the Lion: he wanted the tolls of the salt road from Salzburg, so in 1157-58 he gave it a new bridge and market on his own land, and the town that grew around them outlasted his fall.
Q 08What does 'zu den Munchen', the Old High German name behind Munich, mean?
To the monks
To the monks: the name is usually traced to a settlement founded from a nearby abbey, and a hooded monk has stood on the city's seal since the 13th century, drawn ever more childlike until he became the 'Munich child'.
Q 09Munich lies on which river?
Isar
Isar: the river runs through the middle of the city, and on one of its side channels in the English Garden surfers ride a man-made standing wave a short walk from the centre.
Q 10Bavaria's duke was made a prince-elector for helping the emperor crush a Bohemian revolt early in which war?
Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War: Duke Maximilian I lent the emperor an army on condition that he be given the rebel leader's electoral title, and after victory at White Mountain he collected it in 1623.
Q 11In the German Empire founded in 1871, Bavaria ranked second in size behind which state?
Prussia
Prussia. Bavaria drove a hard bargain to join: it kept command of its own army in peacetime, its own postal service and railways and its own beer tax, more independence than any other state in the empire.
Q 12Which socialist journalist led the Munich revolution of November 1918 and proclaimed Bavaria a republic?
Kurt Eisner
Kurt Eisner. His party was crushed in the election that followed, and in February 1919 a nationalist count shot him dead as he walked to parliament to hand in his resignation.
Q 13Hitler's failed 1923 Munich coup began with him storming what kind of venue?
Beer hall
Q 21Besides Bavaria itself, the Bavarian dialect group is spoken across most of which country?
Austria
Austria. Every Austrian state except Vorarlberg speaks a Bavarian dialect, Vienna included, while the north of Bavaria itself speaks Franconian instead.
Q 22What is the name of Germany's highest mountain, which stands in the Bavarian Alps?
Zugspitze
Zugspitze. An army surveyor mapping the range made the first documented climb in 1820 with an assistant and a guide; today a rack railway and cable cars carry visitors to the summit.
Q 23Who taps the first keg to open Oktoberfest each year with the cry 'O'zapft is!'?
The mayor of Munich
A beer hall. Hitler burst into Munich's Bürgerbräukeller and declared a national revolution; police gunfire stopped his march the next day, and he was freed after less than a year of a five-year sentence.
Q 14Why did Bavaria's parliament vote against West Germany's Basic Law in 1949?
It gave too little power to the states
It gave too little power to the states, Bavaria's deputies decided, but they also agreed to be bound by the law if two-thirds of the other states ratified it, and every one of them did.
Q 15Which party has supplied every Minister-President of Bavaria since 1957?
CSU
CSU. It stands for election only in Bavaria, while its sister party the CDU stays off the ballot there, so the two never compete and sit as one group in the Bundestag.
Q 16Which Bavarian Minister-President of 1978 to 1988 has Munich's airport named after him?
Franz Josef Strauß
Franz Josef Strauß. As West Germany's defence minister he had to resign in 1962 over the Spiegel affair, after editors of a magazine that had criticised him were arrested on suspicion of treason.
Q 17Which Bavarian village has staged its Passion Play about once a decade since 1634?
Oberammergau
Oberammergau. By tradition the villagers vowed during a plague outbreak to act out Christ's Passion every ten years, and the first performance was staged in the churchyard, over the graves of the victims.
Q 18Munich is the capital of which Bavarian administrative region?
Upper Bavaria
Upper Bavaria. The regions were originally named after rivers, copying France's départements, until King Ludwig I ordered a return to historic names in 1837.
Q 19The Bavarian flag comes in two official forms, one striped and one covered in what?
White and blue lozenges
White and blue lozenges. The diamonds were the arms of the Counts of Bogen, and Bavaria's dukes took them over when that family died out in 1242; by law neither flag outranks the other.
Q 20Which concentration camp near Munich, opened in March 1933, became the model for the whole Nazi camp system?
Dachau
Dachau. Set up in an abandoned munitions factory weeks after Hitler took power, it first held political opponents, and the SS guards trained here went on to staff the later camps.
The mayor of Munich. The custom began in 1950, when mayor Thomas Wimmer needed more than a dozen blows to drive in the tap; the first mug poured is handed to Bavaria's Minister-President.
Q 24Ludwig II of Bavaria, who built Neuschwanstein, was known by which nickname?
The Fairy Tale King
The Fairy Tale King. From 1875 Ludwig slept by day and lived by night, crossing the mountains in ornate sleighs and having operas and plays staged for an audience of one.
Q 25What happened to Ludwig II in June 1886, the day after his arrest at Neuschwanstein?
He and his doctor were found dead
He and his doctor were found dead in Lake Starnberg. The doctor was the psychiatrist who had certified the king insane, and the official verdict of suicide by drowning has been disputed ever since.
Q 26In 1867 Ludwig II was briefly engaged to Sophie Charlotte, younger sister of which royal?
Empress Elisabeth of Austria
Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Ludwig postponed the wedding again and again, broke the engagement off after less than nine months and never came close to marrying again.
Q 27How did Ludwig II pay for Neuschwanstein?
His own fortune and heavy borrowing
His own fortune and heavy borrowing. By 1885 foreign banks were threatening to seize his property, and when he went on planning new castles his ministers had him declared insane.
Q 28Neuschwanstein's wall paintings show the medieval legends behind the operas of which composer, Ludwig II's idol?
Wagner
Richard Wagner. Ludwig summoned the debt-ridden composer to Munich within weeks of becoming king, was forced by his ministers to send him away the next year, and went on paying for his work regardless.
Q 29Ludwig II's Herrenchiemsee palace, on an island in the Chiemsee, was modelled on which building?
Versailles
Versailles. Ludwig built it as a monument to Louis XIV, the French king he revered, yet he stayed there for only a few days in 1885, and work stopped for good when he died the next year.
Q 30Which of Ludwig II's three palaces was the smallest and the only one actually completed?
Linderhof
Linderhof. In its park he had an artificial cave built for himself alone, with a lake and a waterfall, lit in changing colours by electric light that was ultra-modern in 1878.