Bosnia and Herzegovina Trivia
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60 free Bosnia and Herzegovina trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Bosnia and Herzegovina is where World War I began, where the 1984 Winter Olympics were held, and where the longest siege of a capital in modern history took place. It has a rotating three-member presidency, a currency still named after the Deutsche Mark, a 20-kilometre coastline with a single town, and a rebuilt Ottoman bridge that young men dive from for money. This quiz covers geography (Neum, Maglić, the Neretva), history (the medieval kingdom, Ottoman rule, Gavrilo Princip, Yugoslavia, the 1992-95 war and Dayton), the unusual political system (entities, the Brčko District, the High Representative), symbols (a flag full of stars, a Nobel laureate's bridge novel) and culture (ćevapi, coffee ritual, sevdalinka, Kusturica and Tanović). Questions run from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and other reference pages before publishing.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Bosnia and Herzegovina shares land borders with which three countries?
Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro
Bosnia and Herzegovina borders Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro; the Croatian border alone runs about 932 km, wrapping around the north and west of the country.
Q 02Bosnia and Herzegovina's coastline on the Adriatic is roughly how long?
20 km
The Adriatic coast is only about 20 km long, a single short stretch that splits Croatia's Dubrovnik region from the rest of Croatia.
Q 03Which is the only town on Bosnia and Herzegovina's short Adriatic coast?
Neum
Neum is the only town on the coast, a small resort of a few thousand people whose strip of shore cuts Croatia's southernmost territory off from the rest of Croatia.
Q 04Whose assassination in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 sparked World War I?
Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne, and his wife Sophie were shot in their open car by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb member of Young Bosnia.
Q 05Why was Gavrilo Princip, the 1914 Sarajevo assassin, spared the death penalty?
He was too young, at 19
Princip was 19, too young to hang: the law barred the death penalty for anyone under 20 at the time of the crime; he got the maximum prison term and died of tuberculosis in Theresienstadt in 1918.
Q 06Which Ottoman-era bridge over the Miljacka stands beside the spot where Franz Ferdinand was shot?
Latin Bridge
The Latin Bridge, an Ottoman-era stone bridge over the Miljacka, stands beside the corner where Princip fired; Yugoslav authorities renamed it Princip's Bridge, and the old name was restored in the 1990s.
Q 07Sarajevo hosted the Winter Olympics in which year?
1984
Sarajevo hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics from 8 to 19 February, the first Winter Games staged in a socialist country.
Q 08Vučko, the mascot of the Sarajevo Olympics, was what kind of animal?
A wolf
Vučko was a wolf, drawn by Slovenian illustrator Jože Trobec and chosen by a public newspaper vote; his name comes from vuk, the local word for wolf.
Q 09The 1992-96 encirclement of Sarajevo holds what grim record?
Longest blockade of a capital in modern warfare
At 1,425 days, from April 1992 to February 1996, it was the longest blockade of a capital in modern warfare, outlasting Leningrad's 872 days by more than a year; nearly 14,000 people were killed.
Q 10The wartime Sarajevo Tunnel, hand-dug in 1993, ran beneath what?
The airport runway
The Tunnel of Hope ran under the UN-controlled airport runway, linking besieged Dobrinja with Butmir on the free side; completed in mid-1993, it carried food, arms and people.
Q 11"Sarajevo Roses" scattered around the city are what?
Mortar-shell scars in concrete filled with red resin
Sarajevo Roses are mortar-shell scars in the concrete filled with red resin; about 200 were laid, each marking a spot where a single shell killed several people during the siege.
Q 12The 1995 agreement that ended the Bosnian War was negotiated at an air force base in which US state?
Ohio
Talks ran 1–21 November at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio; the accord was formally signed in Paris on 14 December.
Q 13Under the Dayton Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina is split into the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and what?
Q 21Bosnia and Herzegovina's currency, the KM, was pegged at par to which currency when introduced in 1998?
The Deutsche Mark
The convertible mark was pegged one-to-one to the Deutsche Mark under a currency board; in 2002 the peg was carried over to the euro at 1.95583 KM, the old DM rate, and it is divided into 100 fenings.
Q 22Stari Most, the famous "Old Bridge" of Mostar, was destroyed in November 1993 by whom?
Croatian Defence Council (HVO) shelling
Commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1557, it was rebuilt and reopened in 2004 and is now a World Heritage Site.
Q 23Mostar's Old Bridge crosses which river?
Neretva
Republika Srpska
The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina covers 51% of the territory and Republika Srpska 49%; each entity has its own president, parliament and police.
Q 14Bosnia and Herzegovina's presidency consists of how many members?
Three, one Bosniak, one Serb and one Croat
The presidency has three members, one Bosniak, one Serb and one Croat, elected together for a four-year term, with the chair rotating among them.
Q 15Which internationally appointed official can impose laws and sack officials in Bosnia under the 'Bonn Powers'?
The High Representative
The High Representative, an office created by the Dayton Agreement's civilian annex and chosen by the Peace Implementation Council, was granted the Bonn Powers in December 1997.
Q 16Which north-eastern town is a self-governing district belonging to both entities but run by neither?
Brčko
Brčko District was created by international arbitration, with the final award in March 1999 and the district inaugurated in March 2000; it belongs to both entities and is governed by neither.
Q 17Which city is the administrative centre and largest city of the Serb-majority entity?
Banja Luka
Banja Luka, on the Vrbas river, is the country's second-largest city and houses the entity's government and National Assembly.
Q 18At which town were more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys killed in July 1995?
Srebrenica
Srebrenica had been declared a UN safe area in 1993, yet its lightly armed Dutch battalion could not stop the Bosnian Serb army from overrunning the enclave and killing more than 8,000 men and boys.
Q 19Which Bosnian Serb general commanded the forces responsible for the July 1995 massacre?
Ratko Mladić
Ratko Mladić, commander of the Bosnian Serb army, was convicted of genocide by the UN tribunal in 2017; Radovan Karadžić, the political leader, was convicted in 2016.
Q 20What do the points of the yellow triangle on Bosnia and Herzegovina's flag represent?
The constituent peoples: Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs
The triangle's corners stand for the constituent peoples: Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs, and its shape echoes the country's outline; the stars along its edge symbolise Europe and run off the edge to suggest infinity.
The Neretva flows beneath the Old Bridge; local divers leap about 24 m from its hump-backed span, and Mostar takes its name from the mostari, the bridge-keepers.
Q 24Which Bosnian-born author of The Bridge on the Drina won the 1961 Nobel Prize in Literature?
Ivo Andrić
Ivo Andrić, born near Travnik in 1892, wrote The Bridge on the Drina while living quietly in occupied Belgrade during World War II and received the Nobel Prize in 1961.
Q 25Which Sarajevo-born director won the Palme d'Or twice, including for Underground?
Emir Kusturica
Emir Kusturica, born in Sarajevo in 1954, won the Palme d'Or for When Father Was Away on Business in 1985 and again for Underground, plus Best Director at Cannes for Time of the Gypsies.
Q 26Danis Tanović's 2001 film No Man's Land won Bosnia and Herzegovina its first what?
Academy Award
No Man's Land won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2002, the country's first Oscar; the trench-bound dark comedy also took the Golden Globe in the same category.
Q 27The Sarajevo Film Festival was founded in which unusual circumstances?
During the siege of the city in 1995
Its top prize is called the Heart of Sarajevo.
Q 28Ćevapi, the grilled minced-meat national dish, are traditionally served in what?
A flatbread called somun or lepinja
Ćevapi are tucked into somun, a soft flatbread also called lepinja, with chopped raw onion and often a dollop of kajmak; Sarajevo's version is made from beef.
Q 29Bosnian coffee is traditionally brewed and served in what long-handled pot?
A džezva
A džezva is the long-handled copper pot in which the coffee is boiled and then brought to the table; it is served with a sugar cube and a piece of rahat lokum.
Q 30Sarajevo's old bazaar, founded in the 15th century, is called what?
Baščaršija
Baščaršija, the Ottoman bazaar laid out by Isa-beg Ishaković, is the heart of old Sarajevo; legend says anyone who drinks from its wooden Sebilj fountain will one day return to the city.