Big Ben Trivia
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47 free Big Ben trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
This Big Ben trivia quiz covers London's most famous landmark from every angle: the bell, the clock and the tower. The easy questions are the ones every visitor should know: what Big Ben strictly refers to, which palace the tower belongs to, what the tower was renamed in 2012, and roughly how tall it is. From there it digs into the details that horologists and Londoners love: the architect who drew the tower as his last design, the foundry that recast the cracked bell, why the bell still has a crack today, how old pennies keep the clock accurate, the light that told Queen Victoria the Commons was sitting, the starlings that slowed the minute hand, the prison room, why the dials were painted black, the Handel connection in the chimes, and how many strokes tolled for Queen Elizabeth II's funeral. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry on Big Ben and the Elizabeth Tower before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our London, Buckingham Palace and British history quizzes next.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In wartime Britain, the BBC broadcast Big Ben striking nine each night as the signal for what?
A minute of silent prayer
A minute of silent prayer, later known as the Big Ben Minute, was kept across Britain as the clock struck nine each evening, even while the bombs were falling.
Q 02What new name did Big Ben's tower receive in 2012 to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee?
Elizabeth Tower
Elizabeth Tower replaced a very plain official name, the Clock Tower; Big Ben has only ever been a nickname.
Q 03Big Ben stands at the north end of which building?
The Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster is the home of Parliament, and it is called a palace because kings lived on the site from the 11th century, when Edward the Confessor built there.
Q 04Which architect designed Big Ben's tower, his last work before illness and death in 1852?
Augustus Pugin
Augustus Pugin wrote that he had never worked so hard in his life as on these drawings, made for the chief architect Charles Barry; he died aged 40 and never saw the tower built.
Q 05Big Ben's tower stands almost exactly as tall as which landmark?
The Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty reaches 93 m only with her pedestal, just short of the 96 m clock tower; the figure herself, at 46 m, is less than half its height.
Q 06Big Ben's bells were silenced as a mark of respect during whose state funeral in January 1965?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill's funeral on 30 January 1965 passed in silence from the clock tower; when a monarch dies the custom runs the other way, and the great bell is tolled slowly.
Q 07Why did Parliament need the new building that gave us Big Ben?
A fire in 1834 destroyed the old one
A fire in 1834 destroyed the old one almost completely, sparing little but the medieval Westminster Hall; Charles Barry won the competition to design its replacement.
Q 08Beneath its skin of sand-coloured limestone, Big Ben's tower is mostly built of what?
Brick
Brick makes up most of the tower, and the limestone is only a facing; the whole thing was built from the inside out, with no scaffolding around it.
Q 09Which fruit, the emblem of Catherine of Aragon, appears among the gilded shields on Big Ben's tower?
Pomegranate
Pomegranate shields honour Henry VIII's first wife and sit beside the rose, thistle, shamrock and leek; a fleur-de-lis is there too, because English monarchs once claimed the throne of France.
Q 10Within days of Big Ben first striking in 1859, an MP rose in the Commons to complain about what?
Its dreadful noise
Its dreadful noise, he said, sounded like funeral notes fit for a royal death, and he asked for the bell's tone to be altered; Londoners grew used to the bong and came to cherish it.
Q 11Engineers began monitoring Big Ben's tower for movement when which Underground line was extended beneath Parliament in the 1990s?
The Jubilee line
The Jubilee line extension passes under Parliament, and a report commissioned because of it found that the tower leans slightly; its keepers expect no trouble from the tilt for thousands of years.
Q 12The Ayrton Light above Big Ben's belfry is lit whenever what happens?
The House of Commons sits after dark
The House of Commons sits after dark, or the Lords does, and the lantern is lit; it is said to have been added so the queen of the day could see from Buckingham Palace that Parliament was at work.
Q 13Big Ben's tower was built with rooms on its lower floors for which unusual purpose?
Q 21The man who designed Big Ben's famously accurate clock was only an amateur clockmaker, so what was his actual profession?
Lawyer
Lawyer and amateur horologist Edmund Beckett Denison drew up the design that was finally judged good enough; as he was no craftsman, a professional clockmaker was hired to build it.
Q 22What became of the mechanism invented to stop wind on Big Ben's hands upsetting its timekeeping?
Tower clocks everywhere copied it
Tower clocks everywhere copied it: the device shields the pendulum from gusts pushing on the hands, and it became the standard for new tower clocks in Britain and then around the world.
Q 23What do Big Ben's clockmakers stack on top of the pendulum to fine-tune the clock's timekeeping?
Locking up unruly MPs
Locking up unruly MPs was the plan: the prison room held members who broke the rules of the Commons, and in 1880 the House voted to confine the atheist MP Charles Bradlaugh there in a row over his oath.
Q 14Victorian journalists commonly called Big Ben's tower by what mistaken name?
St Stephen's
St Stephen's was Victorian press shorthand for the Commons, which had long met in St Stephen's Chapel, so reporters hung the name on the clock tower too; the real St Stephen's Tower is a smaller one over the public entrance.
Q 15Which prime minister welcomed the renaming of Big Ben's tower in September 2012?
David Cameron
David Cameron called it a fitting tribute to the Queen's 60 years of service, and he gave the credit to a fellow Conservative MP, Tobias Ellwood, who had led the campaign for it.
Q 16Big Ben's clock dials are opal glass, which lets them be what after dark?
Lit from behind
Lit from behind, each 7 m dial glows through hundreds of pieces of opal glass; from 1939 to 1945 the lamps stayed off, and the faces went dark for the whole war.
Q 17Glashütte Lamberts, which hand-blew the panes for Big Ben's restored dials, is in which country?
Germany
Germany's Lamberts works in Bavaria still blows flat glass by mouth, so it could faithfully reproduce the dials' old panes, nearly 1,300 of them, each one made by hand.
Q 18Unusually for a clock with Roman numerals, how do Big Ben's dials show the number four?
IV rather than IIII
IV rather than IIII breaks an old habit: the Romans themselves often wrote four as IIII, and clockmakers held on to that older form long after IV became the standard.
Q 19Which original colour returned to Big Ben's dials and clock hands in the 2017-2021 conservation?
Prussian blue
Prussian blue was the first coat: conservators stripped back the layers of black paint, and the blue they found underneath matched an early watercolour of the architect's design.
Q 20Big Ben's hour hands are heavy gun metal, but its much longer minute hands are made from sheets of which metal?
Copper
Copper sheet keeps each 14-foot minute hand light enough to sweep the dial; the first minute hands made for the clock were reportedly so heavy that they had to be replaced.
Pre-decimal penny coins
Pre-decimal penny coins do the job: adding one speeds the clock up by two-fifths of a second a day, and the old pennies are still used though they left circulation in 1971.
Q 24On 1 April 1980 the BBC World Service announced, as a joke, that Big Ben's clock would do what?
Go digital
Go digital was the joke: the BBC's overseas service said the clock would get a digital readout, and it promised the hands to the first listeners to get in touch.
Q 25What must Big Ben's clockmakers do three times a week?
Wind it up
Wind it up is the job: the clock is driven by heavy weights that sink down a shaft inside the tower, and three times a week they have to be wound back to the top.
Q 26During the First World War, Big Ben's bells were silenced and its dials darkened at night to avoid guiding what?
German Zeppelins
German Zeppelins were raiding by night, so the bells stopped and the dials stayed dark for two years; in the next war the dials went dark again, but the bells rang on through the Blitz.
Q 27What slowed Big Ben's clock one day in August 1949?
A flock of starlings on the minute hand
A flock of starlings on the minute hand was enough: the birds' combined weight held the hand back, and the clock ran more than four minutes slow.
Q 28How late did Big Ben ring in the New Year of 1963, after a freezing New Year's Eve?
Nine minutes
Nine minutes late: heavy snow had packed against a dial and ice coated the hands, slowing the clock on the one night when the whole country listens for it.
Q 29What caused the worst breakdown in the history of Big Ben's clock, in August 1976?
Metal fatigue
Metal fatigue was to blame: after more than a century a part gave way and a huge winding weight ran out of control, doing so much damage that the clock was in and out of action for nine months.
Q 30Two climbers from which environmental group scaled Big Ben's tower in March 2004, exposing a worrying gap in Parliament's security?
Greenpeace
Greenpeace sent two climbers up the tower at dawn, and their message was about the Iraq war, not the environment; the breach was called immensely worrying, and the police reviewed security at Parliament.