Burj Khalifa Trivia
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59 free Burj Khalifa trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Burj Khalifa trivia quiz covers the world's tallest building from the 33 test boreholes drilled into weak Dubai sandstone in 2003 to the lounge that opened 585 metres up in 2019. It asks about the height, the floors, the Y-shaped plan borrowed from a desert flower and the Great Mosque of Samarra, the 27 setbacks that confuse the wind, the buttressed core, the Chicago architects and Korean builders, and the recycled steel from East Berlin's demolished parliament. It also covers the numbers people love: how far the tower sways, how many glass panels, windows and elevators it has, how much water it drinks, how many stairs run to the 160th floor, how much cooler it is at the top and how long it takes 36 workers to wash it. Then the records and the drama: overtaking Taipei 101, the CN Tower and the Warsaw radio mast one by one, the surprise renaming at the 2010 opening after Abu Dhabi's bailout, the empty apartments that followed, the record BASE jumps, Alain Robert's six-hour climb, and Tom Cruise dangling off it in Ghost Protocol. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Burj Khalifa, its architect and the people who have jumped off or climbed up it, and each explanation adds one further fact. Good for geography and engineering fans, travellers heading to Dubai and quiz setters who want more than 'how tall is it'. For the wider city, see our Dubai trivia page.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how tall is the Burj Khalifa from the ground to its tip?
Half a mile
Half a mile. The tip stands 829.8 m up, just over half a mile, and the developer kept that final height a closely guarded secret all through construction.
Q 02What fills the Burj Khalifa's topmost floors?
Broadcast gear
Broadcast gear. Nobody lives up there: the highest apartments stop at level 108 of the tower's 163 floors, and the last few are given over to communications equipment and machinery.
Q 03Which skyscraper did the Burj Khalifa replace as the world's tallest building?
Taipei 101
Taipei 101. The Burj overtook it in July 2007 while still a building site, more than two years before it opened, and finished over 300 m taller than the Taiwanese tower.
Q 04Which architecture firm designed the Burj Khalifa?
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill
Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. The Chicago firm won an invited design competition for the tower, its bid backed by a long list of very tall towers that includes Chicago's John Hancock Center.
Q 05Which South Korean company was the Burj Khalifa's main contractor?
Samsung C&T
Samsung C&T. Its crews worked in three shifts round the clock, and at full stretch the tower gained about two new storeys a week.
Q 06The Burj Khalifa was built as the centrepiece of which new Dubai district?
Downtown Dubai
Downtown Dubai. The tower was never meant to stand alone: it anchors a whole new district of homes, hotels and parkland, reportedly part of Dubai's push from oil towards tourism and services.
Q 07By what name was the Burj Khalifa known throughout its construction, until its opening day?
Burj Dubai
Burj Dubai. The name lasted through six years of building and vanished on opening day in January 2010, when a new one was announced in the middle of the ceremony.
Q 08The Burj Khalifa was renamed at its opening to honour Sheikh Khalifa, who then held which office?
President of the UAE
President of the UAE. Sheikh Khalifa also ruled oil-rich Abu Dhabi, which had just bailed out debt-laden Dubai during the financial crisis, and the tower is said to have taken his name in thanks.
Q 09From about how far away can the Burj Khalifa's spire be seen?
95 km
95 km. Height like that draws more than the eye: the chairman of its developer said lightning struck the tower twice while it was still being built.
Q 10What form does the Burj Khalifa's footprint take?
A Y-shaped tripartite plan
A Y-shaped tripartite plan. Slim wings put every flat and hotel room close to a window, and views are what sell them: the layout was drawn to make the most of the outlook over the Gulf.
Q 11Which flower, with long thin petals round a central cup, is the Burj Khalifa's design said to echo?
Spider lily
Spider lily. Its designers call it a desert flower of the region, yet botanists know the genus, Hymenocallis, as a native of the tropical Americas.
Q 12What do the Burj Khalifa's designers say its stepped profile does?
Confuses the wind
Confuses the wind. Gusts meet a different outline at every tier, so their eddies never fall into step up the tower; the design team got there by reshaping it through more than 40 wind-tunnel tests.
Q 13About how far can the tip of the Burj Khalifa sway?
1.5 m
1.5 m. The give is deliberate: the tower is built to flex rather than stand rigid, and can move about that far in any direction.
Q 21How long does cleaning the Burj Khalifa's whole exterior take?
Three to four months
Three to four months. A crew of 36 rides cradles that run on tracks fixed to the building, and the job takes so long that the machines are at work for most of the year.
Q 22Which giant shopping centre stands next door to the Burj Khalifa?
The Dubai Mall
The Dubai Mall. That was the idea: the tower was built as the centrepiece of one development of mall, hotels and homes.
Q 23The Burj Khalifa collects about 15 million gallons of water a year from what source?
Air-conditioning condensation
Q 14What do skyscraper experts call the Burj Khalifa's spire, which holds no usable floors?
Vanity height
Vanity height. The term covers spire added above the last usable floor; measured by that floor instead, the Burj would still lead the world, but by only about 2 m.
Q 15How was the Burj Khalifa's steel spire raised into position?
Built inside and jacked up
Built inside and jacked up. The spire was put together within the tower itself, then pushed more than 200 m into the sky by hydraulic pump, rising out of the top like a telescope opening.
Q 16Which demolished building's steel was reused in the Burj Khalifa?
The Palace of the Republic in East Berlin
The Palace of the Republic in East Berlin. East Germany's old parliament was cut up for scrap in 2008 and its girders melted down and sold on, some for the tower in Dubai and some for Volkswagen engines.
Q 17Which company supplied the Burj Khalifa's elevators, including its double-deck observation-deck cars?
Otis
Otis. The firm goes back to Elisha Otis, who showed lifts could be trusted in 1854 by riding a platform high above a New York crowd and ordering its rope cut to prove his safety brake.
Q 18What safety feature helps people escape a fire in the Burj Khalifa?
Refuge rooms
Refuge rooms. Pressurised, air-conditioned and spaced at intervals up the tower, they are there because nobody can be expected to walk all the way down in one go: people stop and shelter on the way.
Q 19Where does the Burj Khalifa's ventilation system draw its fresh air from, to save on cooling?
The top of the tower
The top of the tower. Air at that height is cooler and less humid than at street level, so it takes less energy to chill, a trick the designers call sky-sourced ventilation.
Q 20The Burj Khalifa belongs to which height class, reserved for buildings of 600 m or more?
Megatall
Megatall. Supertall starts at 300 m, a mark well over a hundred towers have passed, but the 600 m class stayed almost empty: years after the Burj opened it still held only a handful of buildings.
Air-conditioning condensation. Dubai's humid air beads on the cooling system in such volume that it is piped to a holding tank in the basement and used to water the gardens at the tower's foot.
Q 24Which fashion designer's first hotel opened inside the Burj Khalifa in 2010?
Giorgio Armani
Giorgio Armani. He did more than lend his name: the designer drew up the hotel's interiors himself, and the floors above it hold private Armani Residences for buyers who want to live in them.
Q 25Khalifa, as in Burj Khalifa, is the Arabic word behind which English title?
Caliph
Caliph. Khalifa means 'successor', the title of those who led the Muslim community after Muhammad; on the tower, though, it is nothing so grand, just the given name of the sheikh it honours.
Q 26What do the residents' sky lobbies on the Burj Khalifa's 43rd and 76th floors both contain?
Swimming pools
Swimming pools. Both open to the outside, so a resident can start a length indoors and swim out onto a balcony high above Dubai.
Q 27At.mosphere, on the Burj Khalifa's 122nd floor, opened in 2011 as the world's highest what?
Restaurant
Restaurant. It sits 441 m up, just two floors below the public observation deck, so a dinner booking comes with almost the same view as a ticket to the deck.
Q 28What closed the Burj Khalifa's observation deck for two months in 2010?
A stuck elevator
A stuck elevator. A lift packed with visitors jammed between floors for 45 minutes, and rescuers had to drop a ladder into the shaft so that the passengers could crawl out.
Q 29Which shorter skyscraper opened an observation deck even higher than the Burj Khalifa's 555 m deck?
Shanghai Tower
Shanghai Tower. Its top deck, about 561 m up, sits a few metres above the Burj's 148th-floor deck, and the Burj took the record back in 2019 by opening a lounge at 585 m.
Q 30Which country is said to be visible from high in the Burj Khalifa on a very clear day?
Iran
Iran. Its shore lies across the Gulf, and the sighting needs air so clear that one writer who has seen it called such days in Dubai 'rare as a gem'.