Bridge Trivia
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100 free Bridge trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Bridge trivia questions with answers. Bridges are the one piece of engineering everybody has an opinion about, and this quiz covers the famous ones. It runs from the Roman Pont du Gard and the world's first cast-iron bridge, through the Brooklyn Bridge and Barnum's elephants, the Golden Gate's colour, Tower Bridge's bascules, the Sydney Coathanger's rivets and the man who slashed its ribbon, Galloping Gertie's collapse, the Ponte Vecchio and the Bridge of Sighs, the London Bridge that moved to Arizona, the Millau Viaduct, the Akashi Kaikyo and Çanakkale record-holders and China's 164-kilometre viaduct. Since 'bridge' also means the card game, the last few questions cover contract bridge for good measure. Easy questions ask which city the Golden Gate is in and what colour it is; the hard ones want how many times Tower Bridge opens a year, the number of rivets in Sydney Harbour Bridge, the dog killed at Tacoma Narrows and the year Harold Vanderbilt wrote the rules of contract bridge. Written for engineers, travellers, pub-quiz teams and card players. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the bridges and the game, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year did the Golden Gate Bridge open to the public?
1937
At the time it was both the longest and tallest suspension bridge in the world, titles it kept until 1964 and 1998 respectively.
Q 02What is the official name of the Golden Gate Bridge's colour?
International Orange
Architect Irving Morrow picked it over a US Navy suggestion of black and yellow stripes for visibility.
Q 03How long is the Golden Gate Bridge's main span?
4,200 feet
Chief engineer Joseph Strauss had once designed a 55-mile railway bridge across the Bering Strait for his thesis.
Q 04Which 1964 New York crossing took the Golden Gate's title as the world's longest suspension span?
Verrazzano-Narrows
It held the record until Britain's Humber Bridge in 1981, and its name was misspelled with one z until 2018.
Q 05Which annual event has started on the bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn since 1976?
The New York City Marathon
It is one of the only times the bridge is closed to cars. It was misspelled 'Verrazano' officially from 1960 to 2018.
Q 06Which waterway does the Brooklyn Bridge cross?
The East River
Opened in 1883, it was the first fixed crossing of the river and an early steel-wire suspension bridge.
Q 07Which engineer completed the Brooklyn Bridge, assisted by his wife Emily, after his father John died?
Washington Roebling
He was left bedridden by decompression sickness from the caissons, and Emily relayed his instructions to the site for years.
Q 08How did P. T. Barnum help prove the Brooklyn Bridge was safe in 1884?
He led 21 elephants across it
Jumbo led the parade. It calmed public doubts after a stampede on the bridge had killed twelve people the year before, and it was free advertising for the circus.
Q 09Tower Bridge in London combines suspension spans with what kind of opening central section?
Bascules
Horace Jones designed it and it opened in 1894. The central bascules lift to let ships through.
Q 10In the 2020s, roughly how many times a year is Tower Bridge's central section raised?
About 1,000
In its first year they went up 6,160 times, about seventeen a day, when the Thames was still a working port.
Q 11What is the Sydney Harbour Bridge's nickname?
The Coathanger
British firm Dorman Long of Middlesbrough built it, borrowing from its own Tyne Bridge design. It opened in 1932.
Q 12How many hand-driven rivets hold the Sydney Harbour Bridge together?
Six million
All Australian-made, and the last was driven through the deck on 21 January 1932.
Q 13Who slashed the ribbon at the Sydney Harbour Bridge opening in 1932 before the premier could cut it?
Francis de Groot of the New Guard
He was on horseback, in uniform, protesting that a royal had not been invited. He later sued the police for wrongful arrest and won.
Q 21By legend, at exactly what time did Charles IV lay the first stone of Charles Bridge in 1357?
5:31 am on 9 July
The emperor was a numerologist and 1357 9/7 5:31 makes a palindrome. Thirty statues line the bridge, all now replicas.
Q 22The Øresund Bridge links Sweden with which country?
Denmark
It runs 8 km to the artificial island of Peberholm, then a 4 km tunnel finishes the crossing to Copenhagen's side. It opened in 2000.
Q 23Scotland's Forth Bridge, opened in 1890, is what type of railway bridge?
Cantilever
It had the longest cantilever span in the world until Canada's Quebec Bridge in 1919 and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Q 14Which Japanese crossing, opened in 1998, had the world's longest suspension span at 1,991 metres?
Akashi Kaikyo
It shrugged off the 1995 Kobe earthquake mid-construction. Turkey's Çanakkale Bridge beat it by 32 metres in 2022.
Q 15The 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, the world's longest suspension bridge since 2022, crosses which strait?
The Dardanelles
Its 2,023-metre main span commemorates the 1915 Gallipoli campaign in its name.
Q 16Which country's Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, at 164.8 km, is the longest bridge in the world?
China
It is a viaduct on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway and has held the Guinness record since 2011.
Q 17Which British architect designed France's Millau Viaduct, long the world's tallest bridge?
Norman Foster
Its structural height is 343 metres, taller than the Eiffel Tower. Engineer Michel Virlogeux led the design.
Q 18Jewellers have held Ponte Vecchio's shops since the 1590s. Who occupied them originally?
Butchers, tanners and farmers
It was the only bridge in Florence the retreating Germans spared in 1944. The current structure dates from about 1345.
Q 19The Rialto Bridge is the oldest of how many bridges across Venice's Grand Canal?
Four
Antonio da Ponte's stone single-span replaced earlier wooden bridges and was finished in 1591.
Q 20Venice's Bridge of Sighs connects the Doge's Palace with what?
The New Prison
The romantic idea that prisoners sighed at their last view of Venice was a 19th-century invention popularised by Byron.
Q 24The bridge at Ironbridge, Shropshire, opened in 1781, was the world's first major bridge of what?
Cast metal
Abraham Darby III cast the ironwork at Coalbrookdale, cradle of the Industrial Revolution.
Q 25The Pont du Gard in southern France was built by the Romans to carry what?
Water to Nîmes
Its aqueduct ran over 50 km. The three tiers of arches stand 48.8 metres high and it has been a UNESCO site since 1985.
Q 26What nickname did construction workers give the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge for how it moved in the wind?
Galloping Gertie
It opened on 1 July 1940 and tore itself apart in a 40 mph wind on 7 November the same year.
Q 27What was the only fatality when the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in 1940?
A cocker spaniel named Tubby
He was left in a stranded car and bit the man who tried to rescue him. Physics textbooks still argue over resonance versus aeroelastic flutter.
Q 28The Mackinac Bridge, the 'Mighty Mac', connects the two peninsulas of which US state?
Michigan
Opened in 1957, it is the longest suspension bridge between anchorages in the Western Hemisphere. Before it, only ferries linked the two.
Q 29How long is Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, opened in 1964?
17.6 miles
Two tunnels let shipping pass over the crossing. It replaced ferries that had run since the 1930s.
Q 30Canada's Confederation Bridge links the mainland to which province?
Prince Edward Island
Islanders called it 'the Fixed Link' before it was named. It opened in 1997 and runs 12.9 km.