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
Known as Serdica in Roman times, it sits at the foot of Vitosha mountain and is famous for its mineral springs.
Q 02Which sea forms Bulgaria's eastern coastline?
Black Sea
The coast runs 354 km and includes resorts like Sunny Beach and Golden Sands.
Q 03Which river forms most of Bulgaria's northern border with Romania?
Danube
Bulgaria's own great rivers, the Iskar, Maritsa and Mesta, all rise near Musala in the Rila mountains.
Q 04Which alphabet was developed in the First Bulgarian Empire and is now used by some 250 million people?
Cyrillic
It was created in the 890s, probably by disciples of Cyril and Methodius, and became the EU's third official script in 2007.
Q 05The Early Slavic alphabet was developed at a literary school in which First Bulgarian Empire capital?
Preslav
Tsar Simeon I's reign there 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
He was a son of Kubrat of Old Great Bulgaria and defeated the Byzantine army of Constantine IV to settle 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
He also introduced Bulgaria's first written code of laws.
Q 08Which Bulgarian ruler abolished paganism and adopted Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 864?
Boris I
The conversion was followed by Byzantine recognition of a Bulgarian church and a new alphabet.
Q 09What did Basil II 'Bulgar-slayer' do to 15,000 Bulgarian prisoners in 1014?
Blinding them, sparing one eye per hundred men
The one-eyed men guided the rest home; Tsar 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
Nicknamed the City of the Tsars, it later hosted the assembly that adopted Bulgaria's first constitution in 1879.
Q 11For roughly how long was Bulgaria under Ottoman rule after 1396?
Nearly five centuries
Liberation came with the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78; full independence was declared in 1908.
Q 12Bulgaria celebrates Liberation Day on 3 March, the date in 1878 of the treaty signed where?
San Stefano
Its "Greater Bulgaria" was cut back three months later at the Congress of Berlin, feeding decades of irredentism.
Q 13Which 1876 rebellion's suppression, reported as the 'Bulgarian Horrors', turned Europe against the Ottomans?
The April Uprising
Up to 30,000 Bulgarians were killed, most notoriously at Batak.
Q 21On 1 March Bulgarians exchange martenitsi, red-and-white charms worn until they see what?
A stork, swallow or blossoming tree
The tradition, tied to the mythical Baba Marta, is on UNESCO's Intangible Heritage list.
Q 22Bulgarian kukeri, men in animal masks with huge bells, dance through villages to do what?
Scare away evil spirits
They appear around New Year and before Lent; 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?
Varna
Q 14Vasil Levski, Bulgaria's national hero known as the "Apostle of Freedom", died how in 1873?
Hanged by the Ottomans in Sofia
A former monk from Karlovo, he built a secret revolutionary network across the country.
Q 15Bulgaria's national flag is a horizontal tricolour of which colours, top to bottom?
White, green, red
It was adopted after the 1877-78 war; the green replaced the blue of the Russian flag that inspired it.
Q 16Bulgaria adopted the euro on 1 January 2026, replacing which currency?
The lev
The name means "lion"; it had been pegged to the euro at 1.95583 since 1999.
Q 17Bulgaria's Rose Valley around Kazanlak produces roughly what share of the world's rose oil?
Close to half
It takes thousands of kilos of Damask rose petals to make a kilo of oil, which sells for more than gold.
Q 18Which Bulgarian medical student first identified Lactobacillus bulgaricus in 1905?
Stamen Grigorov
He isolated it from a sample of Bulgarian yogurt; Mechnikov later linked the stuff to Bulgarian longevity.
Q 19Shopska salad, Bulgaria's national dish, is topped with a thick layer of what?
Sirene (white brined cheese)
Tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and peppers underneath make its colours match the flag.
Q 20Bulgarians traditionally hide lucky charms in a banitsa pastry on which occasion?
New Year's Eve
A dogwood bud stands for health; the filo pie itself is filled with eggs, yogurt and white cheese.
An excavator operator stumbled on it in 1972; one grave alone held about 3,000 gold objects.
Q 24Which Bulgarian city, founded by Philip II as Philippopolis, is among Europe's oldest continuously inhabited cities?
Plovdiv
Known as the City of Seven Hills, it 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
It sits in the Rila range and is the coldest place in Bulgaria, averaging -2.2 °C.
Q 26Bulgaria's largest monastery, a 10th-century World Heritage Site, is named after which hermit saint?
Ivan of Rila
It appears on the old 1 lev banknote and houses about 60 monks in the Rila mountains.
Q 27The 8th-century Madara Rider rock relief shows a horseman doing what?
Spearing a lion
A dog runs behind him; the image appears on Bulgaria's stotinki coins.
Q 28What did the Greeks call the Black Sea peninsula town nicknamed the 'Pearl of the Black Sea'?
Mesembria
Its peninsula old town, packed with churches, 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"
It is a Rhodope song about a rebel leader, accompanied by the kaba gaida bagpipe.
Q 30Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov was murdered in London in 1978 by what method?
A poisoned pellet fired from an umbrella
The ricin pellet was jabbed into his thigh on Waterloo Bridge; the case was never solved.