Bogota
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48 free Bogota trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bogotá sits 2,640 metres up on the Bogotá savanna, the third-highest capital in the world and the biggest city at its altitude anywhere. Founded in 1538 by Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada on Muisca land, renamed Santafé by the Spanish crown and Bogotá again by Simón Bolívar, it is Colombia's political, financial and cultural heart. These 48 questions cover the whole city: the meaning of Bacatá, the zipa Tisquesusa, twelve reed houses at Chorro de Quevedo, the Viceroyalty of New Granada, Antonio Nariño and 20 July 1810, the Battle of Boyacá, El Bogotazo, El Dorado airport and Avianca, TransMilenio, TransMiCable, Ciclovía and Pico y placa, the mule-drawn tram of 1884, La Candelaria, Casa de Nariño, Monserrate, the Gold Museum's 35,000 pieces, the Botero Museum, Rock al Parque, the Cristóbal Colón Theater, ajiaco and canelazo, Santa Fe and Millonarios at El Campín, the 2001 Copa América, the yellow-and-red flag and the black eagle. Easy questions stick to landmarks and transport; the hard tier asks about conquistadors, architects and climate records. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation that adds one more fact. Play it solo or print it for a geography night.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which conquistador founded Bogotá in 1538?
Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada
Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada. Months later two rival expeditions, Belalcázar's from the south and Federmann's from Venezuela, reached the same plateau, and the three leaders agreed to take their claims to Spain.
Q 02Which indigenous people inhabited the Bogotá savanna before the Spanish arrived?
Muisca
Muisca. Famed as goldsmiths, they had no gold of their own: they mined salt on the plateau and traded with neighbouring peoples for the metal.
Q 03By what name was Bogotá known under Spanish colonial rule?
Santafé
Santafé. The name was borrowed from a town in the founder's native Spain, and for centuries the city was styled Santa Fe de Bogotá, pairing it with the older indigenous name.
Q 04Which future head of state, then a 21-year-old law student, was caught up in Bogotá's 1948 riots?
Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro. In town for a student congress, he joined the crowds and took a rifle from a police station they had overrun, later calling the uprising a formative experience.
Q 05Which 1819 battle cleared Simón Bolívar's path into Bogotá?
Boyacá
Boyacá. The fight near a river bridge ended with most of the royalist army and its commander taken prisoner, and Bolívar rode into the capital three days later.
Q 06Which South American capital stands even higher above sea level than Bogotá?
Quito
Quito. In 2007 FIFA banned international matches above 2,500 metres, shutting out both cities; after a month of Andean protests it raised the limit to 3,000 and both were reprieved.
Q 07In the city's official name, Bogotá, D.C., what do the letters D.C. stand for?
Distrito Capital
Distrito Capital. The district stands outside Colombia's departments: Bogotá is the seat of government of the surrounding one, Cundinamarca, without being part of it.
Q 08Which performers did Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus hire in the 1990s to shame bad drivers?
Mimes
Mimes. He reckoned Bogotanos feared ridicule more than fines, so 420 of them were sent out to mock traffic offenders on the city's chaotic streets.
Q 09What is the name of Bogotá's main airport?
El Dorado
El Dorado. It shares its name with the legend born on this plateau, of a chief coated in gold dust, the tale that drew the conquistadors up into these mountains.
Q 10Which airline, founded in 1919 and among the oldest still flying, has its headquarters in Bogotá?
Avianca
Avianca. South America's first commercial airline began not in the mountain capital but on the Caribbean coast, as a company founded by Colombians and Germans.
Q 11Which traditional sport, played in Bogotá's bars, involves throwing a metal disc at targets packed with gunpowder?
Tejo
Tejo. A clean hit sets off a small explosion, and a night's play traditionally comes with crates of beer; Colombia declared it the national sport in 2000.
Q 12Which waterfall on the Bogotá River plunges more than 130 metres just outside the city?
Tequendama Falls
Tequendama Falls. In local legend a hero struck the rock with his staff to open it, draining the flood that once covered the whole plateau.
Q 13The number of huts at Bogotá's 1538 founding honoured which group?
The Apostles
The Apostles. Twelve straw huts went up, and a chronicler wrote that the founders wanted their city to last as long as the Church the twelve had begun.
Q 21What is Bogotá's bus rapid transit system called?
TransMilenio
TransMilenio. Mayor Enrique Peñalosa scrapped plans for a subway and elevated highways and, from 2000, gave the middle lanes of the main avenues to buses at a fraction of the cost.
Q 22Which transport has lifted commuters to Bogotá's hillside Ciudad Bolívar since 2018?
Cable car
A cable car. Its gondolas climb the steep hills in about a quarter of an hour and are reckoned to save residents at least 45 minutes a journey.
Q 23What is Bogotá's Sunday car-free programme on its main roads called?
Ciclovía
Ciclovía. It began with a group of cycling enthusiasts in December 1974, now closes more than 120 km of streets every Sunday and holiday, and has been copied by cities around the world.
Q 14Which town, a day trip north of Bogotá, is known for an underground cathedral carved out of a salt mine?
Zipaquirá
Zipaquirá. Despite its name the church has no bishop, so it is not officially a cathedral at all; its crosses and altars are carved straight from the rock salt.
Q 15In which square is the city's founding site traditionally located?
Chorro de Quevedo
The official founding followed eight months later at Theusaquillo.
Q 16After 1717, Bogotá became the capital of which Spanish viceroyalty?
New Granada
New Granada. Being the capital did not always mean hosting the viceroy: the one in office through the 1740s never lived there and ruled from Cartagena on the coast.
Q 17Bogotá's 1810 uprising against Spanish rule was sparked by a staged quarrel over the loan of which object?
A flower vase
A flower vase. Creole patriots picked the quarrel with a Spanish merchant on purpose, to stir up a crowd and force a new governing council; the day, 20 July, is Colombia's independence day.
Q 18Who translated and secretly printed the Rights of Man in colonial Bogotá?
Antonio Nariño
Antonio Nariño. The pamphlet cost him prison and exile, but he is now honoured as a forerunner of independence: the presidential palace stands on the site of the house where he was born.
Q 19Which Bogotá building did M-19 guerrillas seize in November 1985, in a siege that left about 100 dead?
The Palace of Justice
The Palace of Justice. When the army stormed the building to end the siege, the dead included about half of the judges of Colombia's Supreme Court.
Q 20Whose assassination in 1948 sparked the Bogotá riots known as El Bogotazo?
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. The Liberal leader had been expected to win the next presidential election, and the rioting that followed his murder left much of the city centre in ruins.
Q 24What is Bogotá's licence-plate-based driving restriction called?
Pico y placa
Pico y placa. The name means 'peak and plate': the scheme began in 1998 as a rush-hour ban, and the last digit of a car's number plate decides which days it must stay at home.
Q 25What pulled Bogotá's first tramway when it opened in 1884?
Mules
Mules. They had also hauled the dismantled tramcars up the mountains to the city; electric trams took over in 1910, the riots of 1948 wrecked part of the fleet, and the last tram ran in 1951.
Q 26What is Bogotá's historic centre called?
La Candelaria
La Candelaria. The district is named for Our Lady of Candelaria, to whom a colonial church here is dedicated, and its streets of colonial houses are where the city began.
Q 27How did Simón Bolívar escape assassins who burst into his Bogotá palace in 1828?
He jumped from a window
He jumped from a window. His companion Manuela Sáenz urged him out and then stalled the plotters herself, which earned her the nickname 'the liberator of the Liberator'.
Q 28Which mountain overlooking Bogotá has a pilgrim church at its summit that visitors can reach by funicular?
Monserrate
Monserrate. It is named after the mountain shrine of Montserrat in Catalonia, and pilgrims traditionally make the steep climb to its sanctuary of the Fallen Lord on foot.
Q 29A famous treasure of Bogotá's Gold Museum is a small golden model of what?
Raft
A raft. It is thought to show a ruler setting out for a ceremony on a lake; about 20 cm long, it was found in 1969 in a cave near the town of Pasca, where it had been left as an offering.
Q 30Which Colombian artist's gift of 208 artworks founded a Bogotá museum?
Fernando Botero
Fernando Botero. He handed the collection to Colombia's central bank in 2000 and arranged the rooms of the old mansion himself; the museum opened that year with free entry.