Bulgaria Trivia
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60 free Bulgaria trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Bulgaria gave the world the Cyrillic alphabet, the bacterium in your yogurt, most of its rose oil and the oldest worked gold ever found. It has been an empire twice, a tsardom, a Soviet satellite and, since 2026, a member of the eurozone. Its folk song is flying past the edge of the solar system aboard the Voyager probes, and it once lined a Byzantine emperor's skull with silver to make a cup. This quiz covers geography (Musala, the Danube, the Black Sea coast), history (Asparuh's 681 founding, Simeon's golden age, five centuries of Ottoman rule, the April Uprising, Boris III and the Jews, Zhivkov and the umbrella murder), symbols and culture (the white-green-red flag, martenitsa, kukeri, banitsa and shopska salad), science and arts (Atanasoff, Christo, Canetti) and sport (the 1994 World Cup run, Kostadinova's record). 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 01What is the capital and largest city of Bulgaria?
Sofia
Sofia, at the foot of Vitosha mountain, has been Bulgaria's capital since 1879 and is famous for its mineral springs.
Q 02Which sea forms Bulgaria's eastern coastline?
Black Sea
The Black Sea washes Bulgaria's entire eastern coast, home to resorts such as Sunny Beach and Golden Sands and the port of Burgas.
Q 03Which river forms most of Bulgaria's northern border with Romania?
Danube
The Danube forms about 470 km of Bulgaria's northern border with Romania; the Danube Bridge links Ruse with Giurgiu.
Q 04Which alphabet was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire and is now used by some 250 million people?
Cyrillic
Cyrillic was devised in the 890s by disciples of Cyril and Methodius in the First Bulgarian Empire and became the EU's third official script in 2007.
Q 05Which First Bulgarian Empire capital's literary school developed the alphabet that replaced Glagolitic?
Preslav
Preslav, capital under Simeon I, housed the literary school where the script that replaced Glagolitic was devised; his reign is remembered as the Golden Age of Bulgarian culture.
Q 06The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681 by Bulgars led by which khan?
Asparuh
Asparuh, a son of Kubrat of Old Great Bulgaria, defeated Constantine IV's Byzantine army in 680 and settled his Bulgars south of the great river.
Q 07Which Bulgarian khan is said to have used Byzantine emperor Nikephoros I's silver-lined skull as a cup after 811?
Krum
Krum crushed Nikephoros I at the Varbitsa Pass in 811 and, by Byzantine account, lined the emperor's skull with silver as a drinking cup; he also issued Bulgaria's first written laws.
Q 08Which Bulgarian ruler abolished paganism and adopted Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 864?
Boris I
Boris I was baptised in 864, taking the name Michael after his Byzantine godfather, and won an autonomous Bulgarian archbishopric in 870.
Q 09What did Basil II 'Bulgar-slayer' do to 15,000 Bulgarian prisoners in 1014?
Blinding them, sparing one eye per hundred men
Blinding them, sparing one eye per hundred men, was Basil II's punishment after Kleidion; the one-eyed men led the rest home, Samuil reportedly died of shock and the empire fell by 1018.
Q 10Which city was capital of the Second Bulgarian Empire from 1185 until it fell to the Ottomans?
Veliko Tarnovo
Veliko Tarnovo, the City of the Tsars, held out on its Tsarevets hill until the Ottomans took it in 1393, and in 1879 hosted the assembly that adopted Bulgaria's first constitution.
Q 11For roughly how long was Bulgaria under Ottoman rule after 1396?
Nearly five centuries
Nearly five centuries of Ottoman rule ran from the fall of Vidin in 1396 to liberation in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78; full independence followed in 1908.
Q 12Bulgaria celebrates Liberation Day on 3 March, the date in 1878 of the treaty signed where?
San Stefano
The Treaty of San Stefano, signed on 3 March 1878, drew a 'Greater Bulgaria' that the Congress of Berlin cut back that July, feeding decades of irredentism.
Q 13Which 1876 rebellion's suppression, reported as the 'Bulgarian Horrors', turned Europe against the Ottomans?
The April Uprising
Q 21On 1 March Bulgarians exchange martenitsi, red-and-white charms worn until they see what?
A stork, swallow or blossoming tree
A stork, swallow or blossoming tree, the signs of spring, ends the wearing of martenitsi; the custom, tied to the mythical Baba Marta, joined UNESCO's Intangible Heritage list in 2017.
Q 22Bulgarian kukeri, men in animal masks with huge bells, dance through villages to do what?
Scare away evil spirits
The kukeri have one job: Scare away evil spirits and usher in a fertile year; they appear in midwinter and before Lent, and some scholars trace them to Thracian rites of Dionysus.
Q 23The world's oldest worked gold, from about 4600-4200 BC, was found near which Bulgarian city?
The April Uprising of 1876 was crushed with massacres, most notoriously at Batak; Gladstone's pamphlet 'Bulgarian Horrors' turned British opinion against the Ottomans.
Q 14Vasil Levski, Bulgaria's national hero known as the "Apostle of Freedom", died how in 1873?
Hanged by the Ottomans in Sofia
Vasil Levski, a former monk from Karlovo who built a secret revolutionary network, was captured near Lovech in 1872. Hanged by the Ottomans in Sofia in February 1873, he is mourned as the Apostle of Freedom.
Q 15Bulgaria's national flag is a horizontal tricolour of which colours, top to bottom?
White, green, red
White, green, red is the order of the tricolour adopted in 1879; it follows the pan-Slavic white-blue-red pattern with green in place of blue.
Q 16Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026, replacing which currency?
The lev
The lev, whose name means 'lion', had been fixed at 1.95583 to the euro since 1999 under Bulgaria's currency board before the euro replaced it in 2026.
Q 17Which rose variety is grown in Bulgaria's Rose Valley for its oil?
Damask rose
The Damask rose (Rosa damascena) is picked before dawn in May and June around Kazanlak; several tonnes of petals go into a single kilo of oil.
Q 18Which Bulgarian medical student first identified Lactobacillus bulgaricus in 1905?
Stamen Grigorov
Stamen Grigorov, then a medical student in Geneva, isolated the bacillus from Bulgarian yogurt in 1905; Mechnikov later tied yogurt to Bulgarian longevity.
Q 19Shopska salad, Bulgaria's national dish, is topped with a thick layer of what?
Sirene (white brined cheese)
Sirene (white brined cheese), grated thickly, blankets the tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and peppers, so the salad's colours echo the national flag.
Q 20Bulgarians traditionally hide lucky charms in a banitsa pastry on which occasion?
New Year's Eve
On New Year's Eve the banitsa is baked with kasmeti, paper fortunes or dogwood buds tucked between its filo layers; a dogwood bud stands for health.
Varna
The Varna Necropolis, found by an excavator operator in 1972, yielded some 3,000 gold objects across its graves; Grave 43 alone held about 1.5 kg of gold.
Q 24Which Bulgarian city, founded by Philip II as Philippopolis, is among Europe's oldest continuously inhabited cities?
Plovdiv
Plovdiv, the City of Seven Hills, grew from Thracian Eumolpias, was renamed Philippopolis by Philip II in 342 BC, and was European Capital of Culture in 2019.
Q 25Musala, at 2,925 m, is the highest peak in Bulgaria and the whole of what?
The Balkan Peninsula
The Balkan Peninsula has no higher point than Musala, 2,925 m in the Rila range and the coldest place in Bulgaria; the next highest peak, Vihren in Pirin, is 2,914 m.
Q 26Bulgaria's largest monastery, a 10th-century World Heritage Site, is named after which hermit saint?
Ivan of Rila
Ivan of Rila, a hermit who lived in a cave nearby, inspired the monastery founded in the 10th century; it was rebuilt after an 1833 fire and listed by UNESCO in 1983.
Q 27The 8th-century Madara Rider rock relief shows a horseman doing what?
Spearing a lion
Spearing a lion beneath his horse, the rider is followed by a running dog; the image was on the stotinki coins and is on the national side of Bulgaria's euro cents.
Q 28What did the Greeks call the Black Sea peninsula town nicknamed the 'Pearl of the Black Sea'?
Mesembria
Mesembria, a Dorian Greek colony of the 6th century BC, became the peninsula town whose church-packed old quarter joined the World Heritage List in 1983.
Q 29Which Bulgarian folk song, sung by Valya Balkanska, is on the Voyager Golden Record?
"Izlel ye Delyo Haydutin"
"Izlel ye Delyo Haydutin" is a Rhodope song about a rebel leader, sung by Valya Balkanska with kaba gaida bagpipe and launched aboard Voyager in 1977.
Q 30Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov was murdered in London in 1978 by what method?
A poisoned pellet fired from an umbrella
A poisoned pellet fired from an umbrella delivered ricin into his thigh on Waterloo Bridge on 7 September 1978; he died four days later and no one was ever charged.