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50 free British Cities trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Britain's cities are a tangle of claims and counter-claims: the smallest, the most northerly, the one with its own telephone network, the one that invented the tank, the one that beat odds nobody had ever seen. Many of them did not officially become cities until the twenty-first century, and several still argue over who got there first. This quiz spreads fifty questions across more than forty of them, from the Potteries to the Highlands and from Cornwall to County Antrim. Expect cathedral records, football firsts, nicknames, famous sons and daughters, the films shot in their cloisters and the year each one finally won its letters patent. It suits a pub quiz round, a classroom geography lesson or anyone who has lived in one of these places and wants to see how well they really know it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Devon port, where Drake reputedly finished his bowls before the Armada, did the Mayflower finally leave in 1620?
Plymouth
Plymouth's Mayflower Steps in Sutton Pool mark the Pilgrim Fathers' 1620 departure, and the Hoe is where the 1588 bowls legend is set.
Q 02Which English city, home to Cadbury's Bournville factory since 1879, has more miles of canal than Venice?
Birmingham
Birmingham's canals are less prominent than Venice's because few buildings are reached by water, and the city also bred Black Sabbath and Judas Priest.
Q 03In which city's Eagle pub did Francis Crick announce in 1953 that he and Watson had found 'the secret of life'?
Cambridge
Cambridge heard the news on 28 February 1953, two years after the town was finally granted city status — it has no cathedral, normally a prerequisite.
Q 04Which new town of 1967, famous for roundabouts and Concrete Cows, contains the codebreaking estate Bletchley Park?
Milton Keynes
Milton Keynes only won city status in 2022 after failing in 2000, 2002 and 2012, and its MK Dons began life as Wimbledon F.C., which moved to the town in 2003 and took the new name in 2004.
Q 05In which city did protesters topple a statue of slave trader Edward Colston and push it into the harbour in June 2020?
Bristol
Bristol's Colston statue went into the harbour on 7 June 2020 after a decade of argument over a plaque that ignored his role in the Royal African Company.
Q 06Which city, UK City of Culture in 2017, is the only one in Britain with its own independent telephone network company?
Hull
Hull's KCOM, formerly Kingston Communications, runs that network, and the city hosted the Turner Prize at its Ferens Art Gallery during 2017.
Q 07Wolverhampton's Princes Square saw which British first installed in 1927, commemorated today by striped poles?
Automatic traffic lights
Automatic traffic lights came 74 years before Wolverhampton finally became a city in 2001, after failed bids in 1953, 1966, 1977, 1985 and 1992.
Q 08Which seaside resort, home of the world's longest pleasure pier, became a city in 2022 in memory of MP Sir David Amess?
Southend-on-Sea
Southend-on-Sea's letters patent were handed to the council by Charles, then Prince of Wales, on 1 March 2022, five months after Amess was killed.
Q 09Which Welsh city, the main coal-export port for the Rhondda valleys, was Roald Dahl's birthplace in 1916?
Cardiff
Cardiff's Llandaff district was where Roald Dahl was born, to Norwegian parents; his father Harald was a shipbroker who had settled there in the 1880s.
Q 10Which Northern Irish city, birthplace of Narnia author C. S. Lewis, opened a square in his honour in 2016?
Belfast
Belfast's CS Lewis Square sits in the east of the city beside the Comber Greenway; Lewis was born there on 29 November 1898, before partition.
Q 11At which city's Iffley Road track did Roger Bannister run the first sub-four-minute mile on 6 May 1954?
Oxford
Oxford's 3,000 spectators watched Bannister paced by Chris Brasher and Chris Chataway at a meet between the British AAA and the university.
Q 12Which naval city, birthplace of Charles Dickens and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, is the UK's only island city?
Portsmouth
Portsmouth sits mostly on Portsea Island, and its 170-metre Spinnaker Tower is among the tallest accessible structures in Britain outside London.
Q 13Which Georgian spa city, known to the Romans as Aquae Sulis, joined UNESCO's Great Spa Towns of Europe listing in 2021?
Bath
Q 21Which East Anglian city, home of the Canaries football club, became England's first UNESCO City of Literature in 2012?
Norwich
Norwich also produced the first book written in English by a woman, Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, in 1395.
Q 22In which Yorkshire city did Louis Le Prince shoot the earliest known moving pictures, Roundhay Garden Scene, in 1888?
Leeds
Leeds Bridge was Le Prince's other subject that October, filmed on a single-lens camera loaded with Eastman's paper film.
Q 23Which Yorkshire wool city, birthplace of painter David Hockney, became the world's first UNESCO City of Film in 2009?
Bradford
Bradford followed up as UK City of Culture 2025, having won that designation in May 2022 over Southampton and Wrexham.
Bath had already been a UNESCO World Heritage Site in its own right since 1987, and its Royal Crescent and Circus are built from local Bath stone.
Q 14Sheffield's Crucible Theatre has hosted which sporting event every year since 1977, alongside its stage plays?
World Snooker Championship
World Snooker Championship crowds have made the theatre what The Guardian calls the 'spiritual home of snooker', between its regular theatrical runs.
Q 15Which bakery chain, founded and headquartered in Newcastle upon Tyne, has its highest density of shops per head there?
Greggs
Greggs' home city is famed for its bridges, including Robert Stephenson's 1849 High Level Bridge, the world's first road-rail bridge, and the 1876 Swing Bridge.
Q 16Which Gunpowder Plot conspirator was born and educated in York, where he attended St Peter's School?
Guy Fawkes
Guy Fawkes's home city also hosts the National Railway Museum, opened in 1975, which holds the largest collection of railway locomotives in the world.
Q 17Which novelist, brought to Winchester for medical treatment by her sister Cassandra, died there on 18 July 1817?
Jane Austen
Jane Austen is buried in Winchester Cathedral, Europe's longest Gothic cathedral, a short walk from the Great Hall and its 'King Arthur's Round Table'.
Q 18Which fighter aircraft did Supermarine design in Southampton, evolving from its Schneider Trophy seaplanes?
Spitfire
The Spitfire's home port also saw the Titanic sail in 1912 with a crew that was four-fifths Sotonian, and about a third of those who died came from the city.
Q 19Which city, once 'the largest shipbuilding town in the world', has hosted Nissan's UK car factory since 1986?
Sunderland
Sunderland's plant in Washington is now the UK's largest car factory, and the city's football club left Roker Park for the Stadium of Light in 1997.
Q 20Which Welsh city, nicknamed Copperopolis for its copper-smelting heyday, was poet Dylan Thomas's birthplace in 1914?
Swansea
Swansea's natives are called 'Jacks', possibly after a life-saving dog named Swansea Jack, and the city has the largest covered market in Wales.
Q 24Which city, founded in 995 by monks carrying St Cuthbert's relics from the Vikings, was later ruled by prince bishops?
Durham
Durham's cathedral and castle became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1986, and its university, founded in 1832, claims to be England's third-oldest.
Q 25Which Scottish city, home of DC Thomson's Beano and Dandy comics, became the UK's first UNESCO City of Design in 2014?
Dundee
Dundee also built the Antarctic research vessel RRS Discovery, now berthed at Discovery Point, and Keiller's pioneered commercial marmalade there from 1795.
Q 26Which city, the most northerly in the United Kingdom, was granted city status in 2000 as a 'Millennium City'?
Inverness
Inverness is one of Europe's fastest-growing cities, with over a quarter of the Highland population living in or around it.
Q 27Which city, whose Peace Bridge footbridge opened in 2011, was the inaugural UK City of Culture two years later?
Derry
Derry was awarded the title in July 2010, and its Cityside and Waterside are also linked by the Craigavon and Foyle bridges.
Q 28Which Nottingham club, formed in 1862, is recognised as the world's oldest professional football league club?
Notts County
Notts County predates the Football League by 26 years, and the city's Goose Fair, held each October, began over 700 years ago as a goose market.
Q 29Gloucester Cathedral, burial place of Edward II, lent its cloisters to corridor scenes in which film series?
Harry Potter
Harry Potter's Hogwarts corridors were shot there for the Philosopher's Stone, Chamber of Secrets and Half-Blood Prince films.
Q 30Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, has two cathedrals that are both named after which saint?
Patrick
Saint Patrick is said to have founded his main church there in 445, and the town regained city status in 1994 alongside St Davids in Wales.