Capital City
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149 free Capital City trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
60 free capital city trivia questions with answers. Sixty capital city questions that go well beyond Paris and Tokyo. The easy end asks for the capitals of Canada, Egypt, Argentina, Kenya and Australia, the ones people confuse with the biggest city (Ottawa not Toronto, Rabat not Casablanca, Hanoi not Ho Chi Minh City). The middle covers countries that moved their capital on purpose: Brasília, Abuja, Astana, Naypyidaw, Dodoma, Belmopan, and Indonesia's half-built Nusantara. The hard end is for people who know that Bolivia and South Africa each have more than one, that Switzerland has none on paper, that Nauru has none at all, and that Palau's is a cluster of government buildings with no residents. There are records too: the highest, the coldest, the northernmost, the wettest, the smallest. It works as a geography-class warm-up, a pub round that separates the map nerds from the rest, or a solo test. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 149 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city was chosen as Australia's capital as a compromise between two rival cities?
Canberra
Canberra was chosen in 1908 because neither Sydney nor Melbourne would accept the other as capital; Melbourne hosted the federal parliament until it moved to the purpose-built city in 1927.
Q 02Vientiane is the capital city of which Southeast Asian country?
Laos
Vientiane is the capital of Laos. It sits on the Mekong River beside the Thai border and served as the administrative capital of French Laos while Luang Prabang remained the royal seat.
Q 03Which European capital hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics, then endured a 1,425-day siege?
Sarajevo
Sarajevo's siege ran from April 1992 to February 1996, the longest of a capital in modern warfare; the Olympic bobsleigh track on the mountain above the city became an artillery position for the besiegers.
Q 04Before 1982, the capital of Zimbabwe was known by what name?
Salisbury
Founded as Fort Salisbury in 1890 after the British prime minister, it was renamed on the second anniversary of independence.
Q 05Port Moresby is the capital of which Pacific island nation?
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea's capital was named in 1873 by Captain John Moresby, who charted the harbour and called it after his father, an admiral; locals shorten it to Pom City or simply Moresby.
Q 06Which capital did Baron Haussmann rebuild with wide boulevards?
Paris
Paris was rebuilt on Napoleon III's orders: Haussmann tore down crowded medieval quarters for broad avenues, parks and new sewers, and was dismissed in 1870 amid fierce opposition.
Q 07Reunification in 1990 returned which city to its role as capital of all Germany?
Berlin
Berlin regained the title with reunification in 1990, but parliament voted only narrowly in 1991 to move the government there as well, and the move was not completed until 1999.
Q 08Which capital city has an entire independent country inside its boundaries?
Rome
Rome surrounds Vatican City, which became an independent state under the 1929 Lateran Treaty; the popes had refused to accept Italian rule over the city ever since Italian troops took it in 1870.
Q 09Which city did Philip II choose as the seat of the Spanish court in 1561?
Madrid
Madrid became the seat of the court when Philip II moved it there in 1561; apart from 1601 to 1606, when Philip III took the court to Valladolid, it has been the capital for almost all the centuries since.
Q 10Which purpose-built capital, planned by Lucio Costa and Oscar Niemeyer, replaced Rio de Janeiro in 1960?
Brasilia
Brasilia was founded by President Juscelino Kubitschek on 21 April 1960 to pull the seat of government towards the centre of the country.
Q 11Which purpose-built city replaced Lagos as Nigeria's seat of government on 12 December 1991?
Abuja
Abuja was chosen in 1976 for its central site, seen as neutral ground between Nigeria's main ethnic and religious groups, and because Lagos had become badly overcrowded.
Q 12Which city, Turkey's second-largest after Istanbul, is the country's capital and seat of government?
Ankara
Ankara became the headquarters of Atatürk's resistance movement after the First World War, and the national assembly first met there; in 1923, as the republic was founded, it replaced the old Ottoman capital.
Q 13Which is the southernmost capital of any sovereign state?
Wellington
Wellington, at about 41°S, is the southernmost capital of any sovereign state; it took over from Auckland in 1865, after commissioners judged a site on the strait between the two main islands the most central.
Q 21Which city is the capital of Colombia?
Bogotá
Bogotá is Colombia's capital. It sits at about 2,640 metres on a high Andean plateau, so although it lies close to the equator the city stays cool all year round.
Q 22Which city is the capital of Cuba?
Havana
Havana is the capital of Cuba. Spain's treasure galleons gathered in its harbour before crossing the Atlantic, which is why the old town is ringed with colonial forts.
Q 23Which city is the capital of Saudi Arabia?
Riyadh
Riyadh is the capital of Saudi Arabia. Its name means 'the gardens' in Arabic, a reference to the oasis settlement it grew from in the Najd region.
Q 14Which city is Bolivia's constitutional capital, where the Supreme Court still sits?
Sucre
Sucre is named after Antonio José de Sucre, the independence commander who became Bolivia's president; it kept the courts when the seat of government moved away at the end of the 19th century.
Q 15Which city did Queen Victoria pick as Canada's capital in 1857?
Ottawa
Queen Victoria chose Ottawa on 31 December 1857 as a compromise between English and French Canada; the small lumber town was also set back from the US border and hard to attack.
Q 16Which city was known as Edo until 1868?
Tokyo
Tokyo means 'eastern capital'; as Edo it had been the shoguns' seat for more than 250 years, and the new name marked the emperor's return to power after their fall.
Q 17Which city is the capital of Egypt?
Cairo
Cairo was founded by the Fatimids in 969 as a new walled city just north of the older settlement of Fustat; it grew to swallow its predecessor, and its metropolitan area now reaches the Giza pyramids.
Q 18Which city, now Kenya's capital, started out in the late 1890s as a railway depot?
Nairobi
Nairobi began as a supply depot on the Uganda Railway from Mombasa; the railway's chief engineer picked the site for its high, cool ground and reliable water supply.
Q 19Which city is the capital of Argentina?
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is Argentina's capital. The name, rendered 'fair winds' or 'good air', is shortened from the 1536 settlement's dedication to Santa María del Buen Aire, a Madonna whom sailors invoked.
Q 20Which city is the capital of Peru?
Lima
Lima is the capital of Peru. Francisco Pizarro founded it in 1535 as the City of Kings, a name honouring the Three Kings, because the site was chosen on the feast of the Epiphany.
Q 24Which city was the capital of British India until George V announced a move to Delhi in 1911?
Kolkata
Kolkata, then spelt Calcutta, lost the title at the 1911 Delhi Durbar; nationalist unrest in Bengal had made it an uneasy seat for the British, and the purpose-built New Delhi was inaugurated in 1931.
Q 25Which city, rather than Casablanca, is the capital of Morocco?
Rabat
Rabat became the administrative capital when the French protectorate, set up in 1912, moved the seat of government from the old imperial city of Fez; it kept the role at independence in 1956.
Q 26Which city is the capital of Vietnam?
Hanoi
Hanoi is Vietnam's capital. Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, is much larger, but Hanoi, capital of the North, became capital of the whole country at reunification in 1976.
Q 27Which city is the capital of Pakistan?
Islamabad
Islamabad, whose name means 'City of Islam', was built from scratch in the 1960s to replace Karachi as Pakistan's capital, with neighbouring Rawalpindi serving as the interim seat of government.
Q 28Which city replaced Manila as the official capital of the Philippines from 1948 to 1976?
Quezon City
Quezon City, named after President Manuel Quezon, held the title until a 1976 decree handed it back to Manila; the House of Representatives still meets there.
Q 29Which city is the capital of Ecuador?
Quito
Quito, Ecuador's capital, sits at about 2,850 metres in the Andes just south of the equator that gives the country its name; the larger city, Guayaquil, is the main port.
Q 30Which city is the capital of Kazakhstan, and was briefly renamed Nur-Sultan between 2019 and 2022?
Astana
Astana means 'capital city' in Kazakh; it took the name Nur-Sultan in 2019 to honour the departing president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and switched back in 2022 after he fell from favour.