Brussels Trivia
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50 free Brussels trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Brussels trivia quiz covers a city that grew from a chapel on a marshy island into the capital of Belgium and the headquarters of the European Union and NATO. It starts with the essentials: what the name means, how many municipalities make up the region, which two languages are official, what the yellow iris on the flag refers to and where the river went. Then it works through the history: Charles V's abdication at Coudenberg, Louis XIV's bombardment that flattened the Grand-Place, the opera performance that started the 1830 revolution, the first passenger railway on the Continent and the mayor who buried the Senne. The second half is the Brussels people actually visit. Manneken Pis and his thousand costumes, his sister and the dog, the Atomium and Mini-Europe, the Galeries Saint-Hubert, the vast Palace of Justice, Horta's Art Nouveau, the Berlaymont, the comic-strip walls, the Ommegang and the flower carpet. It also covers the food, the football club with 34 titles, and the famous natives: Hergé, Audrey Hepburn, Jacques Brel and Magritte. For the country as a whole, see our separate Belgium quiz. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Brussels and its landmarks, institutions and people, and each question links to the page that establishes it. Fifty questions, free, with an explanation after every answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which action star was born in Brussels?
Jean-Claude Van Damme
Jean-Claude Van Damme, 'the Muscles from Brussels', was born in Berchem-Sainte-Agathe in 1960. The City of Brussels itself is only one of the region's 19 municipalities, each run by its own mayor and council.
Q 02Brussels began on an island, and its name most likely means what in Old Dutch?
Settlement in the marsh
Settlement in the marsh is the usual reading: Old Dutch 'bruoc', marsh, plus 'sella', home. The river that fed the marsh turned so foul that the city vaulted it over in the 19th century.
Q 03On which river did Brussels grow up?
Senne
Brussels grew up on the Senne; the river's course through the city was covered over between 1867 and 1871 because it had become a health hazard.
Q 04Which work did Karl Marx finish in Brussels in early 1848, weeks before revolution broke out in Paris?
The Communist Manifesto
The Communist Manifesto was printed in London that February, just as revolution broke out in Paris. Days later Belgium's king ordered Marx out of the country, and the Brussels police held him under arrest before he left.
Q 05Which two languages are official in the Brussels-Capital Region?
French and Dutch
French and Dutch are the region's two official languages; historically Dutch-speaking, the city shifted to French from the late 19th century, and the region itself was created in 1989.
Q 06Which flower is the emblem of the Brussels Region and appears on its flag?
Yellow iris
The yellow iris has been the region's emblem since 1991, drawn as a stylised bloom on a blue flag. It also gives its name to the Iris Festival, the region's official celebration every May.
Q 07Which two bodies besides the EU have their headquarters or secretariat in Brussels?
NATO and the Benelux
NATO and the Benelux Union both have their seats in Brussels. NATO only arrived in 1967, moving from Paris after France pulled out of the alliance's military command.
Q 08Which archangel, patron saint of the City of Brussels, tops the Town Hall spire as a gilded statue?
Michael
Michael, slaying a demon, crowns a tower that sits visibly off-centre. Legend says the architect leapt from it on spotting the flaw, but the building simply went up in stages over half a century.
Q 09Which Habsburg emperor abdicated his possessions at the Coudenberg Palace in 1555?
Charles V
Charles V, crippled by gout, leaned on young William of Orange's shoulder as he handed the Netherlands to his son Philip. William later led the Dutch revolt against that same Philip.
Q 10Which French king's bombardment of 1695 destroyed the Grand-Place and a third of the city?
Louis XIV
Louis XIV's army shelled Brussels for three days in August 1695, hoping to draw the allies away from their siege of Namur. It failed: Namur fell three weeks later.
Q 11The Belgian Revolution broke out in 1830 on the night Brussels staged which opera about a revolt in Naples?
La Muette de Portici
La Muette de Portici played in Brussels on 25 August 1830; after its patriotic duet many in the audience left to join the riots that grew into the Belgian Revolution.
Q 12Who became the first King of the Belgians in 1831?
Leopold I
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg took the oath as Leopold I, first King of the Belgians, on 21 July 1831; the date became Belgium's national day.
Q 13Which first for Belgium opened between Brussels and Mechelen in May 1835?
A railway line
A railway line: trains first ran from Brussels to Mechelen on 5 May 1835. Belgium, independent for less than five years, planned its lines as a state project and built Europe's first national rail network.
Q 21The Atomium's nine spheres show the unit cell of which crystal, magnified 165 billion times?
Iron
Iron it is, though the name says otherwise: 'Atomium' blends 'atom' and 'aluminium', the metal that first covered the nine spheres. Stainless steel took its place in the renovation of 2004 to 2006.
Q 22Which Brussels-born musician had a number-one hit across Europe with 'Alors on danse'?
Stromae
Stromae, born Paul Van Haver, first rapped as Opsmaestro, then made his stage name by swapping the syllables of 'maestro'. His 2009 song went to number one from France to Russia.
Q 23Which park at the foot of the Atomium is filled with 1:25 scale models of famous buildings?
Mini-Europe
Q 14Which famous battle was fought just south of Brussels?
Waterloo
Waterloo, fought on 18 June 1815, ended Napoleon's rule for good. Three nights earlier Wellington was at the Duchess of Richmond's ball in Brussels when word came of how fast the French were advancing.
Q 15Which exiled French novelist lodged in a guildhall on the Grand-Place in 1852?
Hugo
Victor Hugo, who had fled France after denouncing Louis-Napoléon's coup, lodged at the Pigeon guildhall on the square. UNESCO added the Grand-Place to its World Heritage list in 1998.
Q 16Where is the original 1619 Manneken Pis kept, now that a replica stands on its street corner?
The Brussels City Museum
The Brussels City Museum, on the Grand-Place, keeps Jérôme Duquesnoy's bronze. The statue was stolen or damaged so often that a copy took its place in 1965, the year a thief snapped it off at the ankles.
Q 17Roughly how many costumes are in Manneken Pis's wardrobe?
About 1,000
About 1,000 costumes fill the wardrobe, which has its own museum on the statue's street. Louis XV is said to have sent a gold-embroidered suit in 1747, to calm the city after his soldiers tried to steal the statue.
Q 18What is Jeanneke Pis?
A fountain of a squatting girl
Jeanneke Pis is a fountain of a squatting girl, unveiled in 1987. Restaurant owner Denis-Adrien Debouvrie proposed her to lure visitors into his dead-end alley, and is said to have wanted to restore equality with Manneken Pis.
Q 19What does Het Zinneke, the third of Brussels's 'Pis' sculptures, show?
A dog urinating against a bollard
Het Zinneke, Tom Frantzen's bronze of 1999, shows a dog urinating against a bollard; its name is Brussels dialect for a mutt. When a car broke its legs in 2015, the sculptor mended it and put it back on its corner.
Q 20For which event was the Atomium built?
The 1958 World's Fair
The 1958 World's Fair, Expo 58, was meant to be the Atomium's whole life: it was designed to last six months. It proved so popular that its demolition was put off year after year, and it never came down.
Mini-Europe shows about 350 buildings from some 80 cities, and not all of them stand still: its Vesuvius erupts, and its Berlin Wall comes down.
Q 24Which EU institution is housed in the Berlaymont building?
The European Commission
The Berlaymont is the headquarters of the European Commission; asbestos found in 1990 forced a renovation that lasted until 2004.
Q 25Which architect's Art Nouveau town houses in Brussels are UNESCO-listed?
Victor Horta
Victor Horta opened up the gloomy middle of the narrow Brussels town house with a metal frame and a glass roof that let daylight into its core. Four of his houses, his own among them, joined UNESCO's list in 2000.
Q 26What does the term 'Brusselisation' describe?
Careless demolition and redevelopment of a historic city
'Brusselisation' means the careless demolition and redevelopment of a historic city by unchecked developers. Its emblem is the Maison du Peuple, an Art Nouveau landmark torn down in 1965 to make way for an office tower.
Q 27Which Brussels landmark's restoration began in 1984 and was still unfinished 40 years later?
Palace of Justice
The Palace of Justice, Joseph Poelaert's design and reputedly the largest building of the 19th century, wore its scaffolding so long that the scaffolding itself had to be renovated.
Q 28Which chocolate was invented in 1912 in Brussels's Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert?
Praline
The praline, a chocolate shell around a soft filling, was Jean Neuhaus II's idea; his family's shop had begun as a pharmacy coating its medicines in chocolate. The glass-roofed arcade around it had opened in 1847.
Q 29Which king drove the completion of the Cinquantenaire's triumphal arch in 1905?
Leopold II
Leopold II fought for years with a government that refused to pay for the arch. It was finally finished with private money in 1905, just in time for the 75th anniversary of Belgian independence.
Q 30Which vehicles ran through Brussels's first underground line before it became a metro?
Trams
Trams used the tunnel from De Brouckère to Schuman from 1969, a 'premetro' built so that it could be upgraded later. Metro trains took it over on 20 September 1976.