Buenos Aires Trivia
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59 free Buenos Aires trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Buenos Aires was founded twice, bombed once by its own navy, and named after a Sardinian Madonna its sailors prayed to for fair winds. This quiz walks through all of it: Pedro de Mendoza's failed 1536 settlement and Juan de Garay's permanent one, the British invasions, the May Revolution, the 1880 federalization and the first elected mayor in 1996. The rest of the set is the city people actually visit and live in. There are questions on the Casa Rosada and why it is pink, the Obelisk that a German firm finished in 31 days, Avenida 9 de Julio, the Teatro Colón, La Recoleta Cemetery, Caminito and the Floralis Genérica, plus tango, Lunfardo slang, colectivos, the Subte, black-and-yellow taxis and the 48 official barrios. Sports fans get Boca and River, the 1978 World Cup, Fangio and pato. Easy questions ask which country the city leads and what the dance is called; hard ones want the year of federalization, the Verdi opera that opened the Colón and the world first inside the Kavanagh Building. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our Argentina and Real Madrid quizzes next.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of which country?
Argentina
Argentina takes its name from the Latin word for silver, a relic of the riches early Spanish explorers dreamed of finding up its rivers.
Q 02Buenos Aires sits on which estuary, often described as the world's widest river?
The Río de la Plata
The Río de la Plata means 'river of silver', but the silver was a myth: explorers named it for riches rumoured to lie upstream and searched in vain. It is some 220 km across where it meets the Atlantic.
Q 03Residents of Buenos Aires are commonly known by what nickname, which literally means 'port-city person'?
Porteños
The same word is used in Valparaíso, Montevideo, Acapulco and other port cities, but abroad it is almost always taken to mean someone from Buenos Aires.
Q 04Buenos Aires is named after a Sardinian Madonna venerated as protector of whom?
Sailors
Sailors prayed to Our Lady of Bonaria: legend says her statue, thrown overboard in a crate from a storm-tossed ship, stilled the sea and floated ashore at Cagliari. The city's founders are said to have named it for her.
Q 05Which Spanish conquistador led the expedition that first founded Buenos Aires, a settlement abandoned within a few years?
Pedro de Mendoza
Pedro de Mendoza arrived gravely ill and died at sea the next year on his way back to Spain. Short of food and under attack from the local people, the settlers he left behind held out for only a few years more.
Q 06From which present-day capital did Juan de Garay sail downriver to found Buenos Aires in 1580?
Asunción
Asunción had sheltered the survivors when the first settlement was abandoned four decades earlier, so Garay's voyage was a return; he named his town Trinidad, and only its port kept the Buenos Aires name.
Q 07Which navigator probed the estuary beside modern Buenos Aires in 1520, hoping it was a passage to the Pacific?
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan found his strait later that year, far to the south. Juan Díaz de Solís had explored the same estuary four years earlier and was killed on its shore, which ended his expedition.
Q 08Which foreign power briefly occupied Buenos Aires in 1806 and failed again in 1807?
Britain
Britain was beaten both times by locally raised forces with little help from Spain, and that success gave the city's criollos the confidence to push for self-rule a few years later.
Q 09Which Buenos Aires building hosted the 1810 assembly that deposed the Spanish viceroy?
The Cabildo
The Cabildo was the colonial town council's seat. It still stands on the square, though it lost three arches on each side when two avenues were cut past it.
Q 10Which city was founded in 1882 to replace Buenos Aires as provincial capital?
La Plata
La Plata was planned from scratch because making Buenos Aires the federal capital two years earlier had left the surrounding province without a capital of its own.
Q 11Since a 1994 amendment gave Buenos Aires autonomy, the city is commonly known by which abbreviation?
CABA
CABA stands for Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires. Until the reform, the national president appointed the city's mayor; residents first elected their own in 1996.
Q 12Who won Buenos Aires's first mayoral election in 1996 and later resigned as the nation's president during the 2001 crisis?
Fernando de la Rúa
Fernando de la Rúa quit halfway through his term as deadly riots over the economic collapse spread, and he left the presidential palace by helicopter.
Q 13Which Buenos Aires building houses the national president's office?
Casa Rosada
Q 21Boca Juniors' stadium is nicknamed La Bombonera because of its resemblance to what?
A chocolate box
A chocolate box is what 'bombonera' means in Spanish. The story goes that architect Viktor Sulčič was given one as a gift and was struck by how closely it matched his steep, stacked plans.
Q 22The fiercest derby in Argentine football, the Superclásico, pits Boca Juniors against which club?
River Plate
River Plate was founded in the same dockside neighbourhood as its rival, four years earlier. It later moved north across the city, and a costly signing in 1931 earned it the nickname 'the Millionaires'.
Q 23Which team did hosts Argentina beat 3–1 in Buenos Aires to win the 1978 World Cup?
The Netherlands
Casa Rosada means Pink House. One popular story says cow's blood was mixed into the paint to help it withstand the city's humidity.
Q 14Which 1870s president is said to have chosen the colour of Buenos Aires's government house to blend two rival parties' colours?
Domingo Sarmiento
Domingo Sarmiento is believed to have mixed Federalist red with Unitarian white, hoping the blended colour would cool the long feud between the two parties.
Q 15The Obelisk of Buenos Aires was erected in 1936 to mark what anniversary?
400 years since the city's first foundation
It marked 400 years since the city's first foundation, yet three years later the city council voted to tear the Obelisk down, and only the mayor's veto saved it.
Q 16Which avenue, 'the street that never sleeps', meets 9 de Julio at the Obelisk?
Corrientes
Corrientes earned the nickname from its late-night pizzerias, cafés and bars. It was widened into an avenue in 1936, the year the Obelisk rose at the crossing in just 31 days.
Q 17Avenida 9 de Julio, generally called the widest avenue in the world, is named after what?
Argentina's Independence Day
Argentina's Independence Day falls on 9 July. France refused to let its embassy be demolished when the avenue was cut through the city, so the mansion still stands at the northern end.
Q 18Which Buenos Aires opera house opened in 1908 with Verdi's Aida?
Teatro Colón
Teatro Colón outlasted two of its architects: Francesco Tamburini died early in the project and his successor Vittorio Meano was murdered before it opened, leaving a third man to finish the job.
Q 19Floralis Genérica, a giant steel flower in Buenos Aires, was built to do what?
Open each morning
Open each morning is what its petals were built to do, closing again at dusk. The architect Eduardo Catalano created the 18-ton flower and gave it to the city as a gift.
Q 20The brightly painted street museum called Caminito is found in which Buenos Aires neighbourhood?
La Boca
La Boca was home to the painter Benito Quinquela Martín, who in the 1950s led the drive to turn the alley, an abandoned railway line, into an open-air street museum.
The Netherlands were inches from winning it: Rob Rensenbrink hit the woodwork in the last seconds of normal time, before Mario Kempes and Daniel Bertoni scored in extra time.
Q 24Buenos Aires lost its bid to host the 1956 Summer Olympics by a single vote to which city?
Melbourne
Melbourne won the final ballot 21–20, then found that Australia's quarantine laws kept foreign horses out, so the equestrian events were held in Stockholm months before the Games.
Q 25Pato, declared the national game in 1953, is best described as a kind of what?
Basketball played on horseback
Basketball played on horseback is the tamed version: riders once fought over a live duck in a basket, and the game was banned several times for its violence before rules were written in the 1930s.
Q 26Which driver won the Argentine Grand Prix in Buenos Aires four years running, from 1954 to 1957?
Juan Manuel Fangio
Juan Manuel Fangio won the 1955 race in searing heat, driving all three hours himself while the next three cars home were each shared between three exhausted drivers.
Q 27Buenos Aires's metro, opened in 1913, holds what distinction?
Oldest in the Southern Hemisphere
Oldest in the Southern Hemisphere, it beat Sydney's first underground stations by 13 years, and the wooden carriages built for its first line stayed in daily service until 2013.
Q 28What do residents of Buenos Aires call their city buses?
Colectivos
Colectivos began in 1928, when taxi drivers hung route signs on their cars and started carrying several strangers at once along a fixed route.
Q 29Which three-letter code, taken from the suburb where it stands, identifies Buenos Aires's main international airport?
EZE
EZE comes from Ezeiza, the suburb where it stands. The official name honours Juan Pistarini, the public works minister who proposed the airport in the 1930s and built it in the 1940s.
Q 30Which company runs the fast ferries that cross directly between Buenos Aires and Montevideo?
Buquebus
Buquebus runs the Francisco on that route, a catamaran driven by aircraft-style gas turbines, which is why Guinness lists it as the world's fastest ferry at about 107 km/h.