50 free Copenhagen trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Copenhagen started as a merchants' harbour guarded by a bishop's fort and grew into the capital of a union that ran the whole Nordic world. This quiz covers that history: Absalon's 1167 fortress, Eric of Pomerania's move, Christian IV's building spree, the 1711 plague and 1728 fire, Nelson's blind eye in 1801, the rockets of 1807, the Golden Age, the 1943 scuttling and the Finger Plan. The sights get their share: Tivoli's charter and its 1915 rollercoaster, the Little Mermaid's Carlsberg patron and her beheadings, Andersen's Nyhavn, the Round Tower ramp Peter the Great rode up, Christiansborg's three branches of government, Amalienborg, Rosenborg's crown jewels, the dragon spire, Christiania's barracks and Strøget's car ban. Then the Øresund Bridge and its tunnel, the driverless metro, Kastrup, Carlsberg's yeast, Noma, smørrebrød, FCK and Brøndby, Distortion and Arne Jacobsen's hotel. Easy questions ask which island the city sits on and who lived at Nyhavn; hard ones want the fire's toll on the medieval town and the yeast that carries the brewery's name. 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 Denmark and Stockholm quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Copenhagen sits mainly on which Danish island?
Zealand
A smaller part lies on Amager, where the airport is; the Øresund strait separates the city from Malmö in Sweden.
Q 02Copenhagen's Danish name København originally meant what?
Merchants' harbour
The Old Norse Kaupmannahǫfn is cognate with 'chapmen's haven'; the Swedish name Köpenhamn is a direct translation.
Q 03Which chemical element is named after Hafnia, the Latin name for Copenhagen?
Hafnium
The name comes from 'havn', harbour; the element was discovered in the city in 1923.
Q 04Which bishop built a fortress on Slotsholmen in 1167, traditionally Copenhagen's founding?
Absalon
It defended against Wendish pirates; Christiansborg Palace stands on the same spot today.
Q 05Copenhagen became Denmark's capital around 1416 when which king moved his seat to Copenhagen Castle?
Eric of Pomerania
That was during the Kalmar Union linking Denmark, Norway and Sweden.
Q 06The University of Copenhagen, the oldest in Denmark, was inaugurated in which year?
1479
Christian I founded it with the approval of Pope Sixtus IV; the Reformation of the 1530s changed its role.
Q 07Which builder-king, reigning 1588-1648, gave Copenhagen its Renaissance summer palace and stock exchange?
Christian IV
He founded the Danish East India Company in 1616 and laid out Christianshavn's canals on Dutch models.
Q 08The Round Tower's famous equestrian staircase is a helical ramp of how many turns?
7.5
Built as an observatory and finished in 1642, it was famously ascended on horseback by a visiting tsar in 1716.
Q 09Which ruler rode a horse up the Round Tower's spiral ramp in 1716?
Peter the Great
The tower is part of the Trinitatis complex with a church and the university library.
Q 10The Copenhagen Fire of 1728 destroyed roughly what share of the medieval town?
47%
It burned from 20 to 23 October and left a fifth of the population homeless; with the 1795 fire it explains why so little of the old town survives.
Q 11Which admiral, telescope to his blind eye, led the main attack at the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen?
Horatio Nelson
He ignored Parker's signal to cease fire; the battle is often called his hardest fought, even beyond Trafalgar.
Q 12The British bombardment of Copenhagen in September 1807 was notable for the deployment of what?
Congreve rockets
It killed 195 civilians, burned about 1,000 buildings and led to the surrender of the entire Dano-Norwegian fleet.
Q 13The post-war Finger Plan shaped Copenhagen's growth along how many railway 'fingers' from the centre?
Five
It is considered the world's first example of a transit metropolis, with early transit-oriented suburbs like Ballerup.
Q 21The royal family moved into Amalienborg's four Rococo mansions after which event?
The Christiansborg fire of 1794
Nicolai Eigtved designed the palaces for four noble families around an octagonal square dominated by the Marble Church.
Q 22Rosenborg Castle, built in 1606 as a royal summer residence, now houses what?
The Danish crown jewels
Its King's Garden is the oldest and most visited park in the city.
Q 23The old stock exchange, Børsen, is famous for a spire shaped like what?
Four dragons' intertwined tails
Q 14Tivoli Gardens opened in which year, making it the world's third-oldest amusement park?
1843
Founder Georg Carstensen told King Christian VIII that 'when the people are amusing themselves, they do not think about politics'.
Q 15Tivoli's Rutschebanen, dating from 1915, is described as the oldest still-operating what?
Rollercoaster
Its ferris wheel of 1943 is likewise the oldest still in use.
Q 16The Little Mermaid statue was commissioned in 1909 by Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of which brewery?
Carlsberg
He had been captivated by a ballet of the tale and asked ballerina Ellen Price to model; Edvard Eriksen's bronze was unveiled in 1913.
Q 17How tall is the Little Mermaid statue on the Langelinie waterfront?
1.25 metres
Vandals have decapitated it more than once; after the 1998 beheading the head was returned anonymously to a TV station.
Q 18Which author lived at Nyhavn for 18 years and is buried in Assistens Cemetery?
Hans Christian Andersen
Kierkegaard and Niels Bohr lie in the same cemetery, which locals also use as a park.
Q 19The Nyhavn canal was dug between 1670 and 1675 by Danish soldiers and whom?
Swedish prisoners of war
King Christian V ordered it after the Dano-Swedish War of 1658–60.
Q 20Christiansborg Palace claims to be the only building in the world housing what?
All three branches of a nation's government
Parliament, the Prime Minister's Office and the Supreme Court share it; the present palace is the third of that name after fires in 1794 and 1884.
The 'dragon spire' is one of the city's most distinctive silhouettes.
Q 24Freetown Christiania was established in September 1971 when squatters occupied what?
A former military barracks
The Bådsmandsstræde barracks in Christianshavn were taken over during the student unrest of the late 1960s.
Q 25Strøget, one of Europe's longest pedestrian streets, was first closed to cars in which year?
1962
The 'temporary' trial became permanent in 1964; planning mayor Alfred Wassard reportedly received death threats over it.
Q 26Which young architect's 1960s initiative brought pedestrian streets and cycle tracks to central Copenhagen?
Jan Gehl
Monocle named the city the world's most liveable in 2013, citing planning that favours cyclists and pedestrians.
Q 27The Øresund Bridge linking Copenhagen to Malmö opened to traffic in which year?
2000
Its 8-km bridge meets a 4-km tunnel at the artificial island of Peberholm so as not to block flights into the nearby airport.
Q 28Why does the Øresund crossing dive into a tunnel for its final stretch to Amager?
To avoid interfering with air traffic and shipping
The tunnel begins at Peberholm, an artificial island in the middle of the strait.
Q 29The Copenhagen Metro, opened in 2002, is notable for being what?
Fully driverless
It complements the older S-train network; the underground City Circle line, Cityringen, came later.
Q 30Kastrup, opened in 1925 on Amager, holds which distinction among Scandinavian air hubs?
The busiest in the Nordic countries
It handles roughly 2.7 million passengers a month on the island of Amager.