Dublin Trivia
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43 free Dublin trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Dublin's Irish name means 'town of the hurdled ford' and its English name means 'black pool', and both places still exist under the modern city. This quiz starts there, with the Vikings of 841, Strongbow and Henry II, Dublin Castle and the Pale, Elizabeth I's Protestant college, and the Georgian boom that briefly made Dublin the second city of the British Empire. It goes on through Arthur Guinness's 9,000-year lease, the Easter Rising and Kilmainham Gaol, Bloody Sunday at Croke Park and the handover of the Castle to Michael Collins. Then it walks the city: the Liffey and its Northside-Southside divide, the Ha'penny Bridge and its toll, Phoenix Park's deer and Papal Cross, the Spire on the spot where Nelson's Pillar was blown up, Trinity's Old Library and the Book of Kells, Swift's cathedral, Temple Bar, Grafton Street and Molly Malone. Culture questions cover Handel's Messiah, four Nobel laureates, Bloomsday, U2 and the Dubliners, and modern Dublin's Silicon Docks and record-breaking airport. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Dublin and its landmarks and events, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Ireland and Irish Culture quiz for the rest of the island.
30 of 43 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name Dublin comes from the Irish Dubhlinn, meaning what?
Black pool
Black pool is what Dubhlinn means: a dark pool where the Poddle met the Liffey, which at first gave Dublin Castle a natural water defence.
Q 02What does Baile Atha Cliath, the Irish name for Dublin, mean?
Town of the hurdled ford
Town of the hurdled ford recalls a wattle crossing near Father Mathew Bridge; it was a separate Gaelic settlement, so Dublin kept two unrelated names.
Q 03Which famous Irish whiskey was once distilled at Bow Street in Dublin's Smithfield?
Jameson
Jameson moved out of Bow Street in the 1970s to a new distillery at Midleton in County Cork, so Dublin's famous whiskey is now made down south.
Q 04Viking Dublin grew into one of western Europe's biggest markets for what?
Slaves
Slaves captured in raids passed through Viking Dublin's port and were traded onward to the north, some as far as Iceland.
Q 05Ptolemy's map of about 140 AD records a settlement possibly near Dublin under what name?
Eblana
Eblana was long taken for Dublin itself, but more recent scholars doubt the link, and no proof ties the name to any site.
Q 06Which Norman lord, enlisted by the exiled King of Leinster, seized Dublin in 1170?
Strongbow
Strongbow, Richard de Clare, took Dublin as Diarmait Mac Murchada's ally and claimed Leinster when Diarmait died; Henry II landed in 1171, fearing Strongbow would build his own kingdom.
Q 07Dublin Castle was founded in 1204 on the orders of which English monarch?
John
King John ordered the castle built in 1204 as a stronghold, and it stayed the seat of British rule until handed to Michael Collins's Provisional Government in January 1922.
Q 08Dublin was the heart of which strip of English-controlled territory in medieval Ireland?
The Pale
The Pale was the English-held land around Dublin; it is often credited with the phrase 'beyond the pale', though the Oxford English Dictionary doubts that origin.
Q 09Which monarch founded Trinity College in 1592 as a Protestant university?
Elizabeth I
Elizabeth I chartered Trinity in 1592; Catholics could take degrees from 1793, yet Ireland's Catholic bishops barred them from attending without permission until 1970.
Q 10In the Georgian era, Dublin briefly ranked as what?
Second-largest city of the British Empire
Second-largest city of the British Empire, Dublin lost its parliament under the Act of Union, and many peers' mansions soon went up for sale.
Q 11Arthur Guinness famously signed a 9,000-year lease on a Dublin brewery at which site?
St James's Gate
St James's Gate is no longer held on that lease: as the brewery outgrew its original site, Guinness bought the land outright.
Q 12At the top of the Guinness Storehouse, visitors drink their pint in which bar?
The Gravity Bar
The Gravity Bar crowns a fermentation plant that shut in 1988, when fermentation moved to a new plant by the Liffey, so the empty building became the Storehouse.
Q 13The Ha'penny Bridge of 1816 got its name from what?
A halfpenny toll to cross it
Q 21The Spire of Dublin stands on the site of which earlier monument?
Nelson's Pillar
Nelson's Pillar was blown up by republican activists in 1966, shortly before the Rising's 50th anniversary, and the Spire went up on the site in 2003.
Q 22Which occasion was the Spire of Dublin built to mark, before objections delayed it?
The millennium
The millennium passed while the Spire's plans were tied up in court, and it rose instead as the centrepiece of O'Connell Street's renewal.
Q 23Which medieval harp kept in Trinity's Long Room is the model for Ireland's national emblem?
The Brian Boru harp
A halfpenny toll to cross it was set to match the fares of the ferries it replaced, which William Walsh had run across the Liffey.
Q 14Which building on O'Connell Street served as the rebels' headquarters during the Easter Rising?
The General Post Office
The General Post Office caught fire under days of British shelling, and its garrison had to abandon the building before the surrender.
Q 15The leaders of the 1916 Rising were executed at which Dublin prison, now a museum?
Kilmainham Gaol
Kilmainham Gaol's Stonebreakers' Yard is where the leaders were shot; after closing in 1924 the jail was rescued and restored by a committee in the 1960s.
Q 16Where did British forces open fire on a crowd on Bloody Sunday, 1920?
The GAA ground on Jones's Road
The GAA ground on Jones's Road, by then Croke Park, came under fire hours after IRA teams organised by Michael Collins killed British intelligence officers.
Q 17Which country star cancelled all five sold-out 2014 Croke Park concerts rather than play only three?
Garth Brooks
Garth Brooks refused to drop two of the five nights after local residents objected, so the licensing row ended with every show cancelled.
Q 18Croke Park is named after Thomas Croke, who held which office?
Archbishop of Cashel
Archbishop of Cashel Thomas Croke was a strong nationalist who backed the land agitation, yet he objected to the Land League's No Rent Manifesto of 1881.
Q 19Where do both houses of the Irish parliament, the Oireachtas, meet?
Leinster House
Leinster House was built as the Earl of Kildare's mansion, and architect James Hoban used it as a model for the White House.
Q 20Which animals have roamed Phoenix Park since the 17th century?
Fallow deer
A herd of fallow deer has lived there since the Duke of Ormond created the park as a royal hunting ground; the Papal Cross marks John Paul II's 1979 Mass.
The Brian Boru harp was made in the 14th or 15th century, long after Brian Boru died, and Guinness uses a mirror image as its trademark.
Q 24Which satirist was dean of St Patrick's Cathedral from 1713 to 1745?
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift is buried in his own cathedral, and he left most of his fortune to found St Patrick's Hospital for the mentally ill.
Q 25Christ Church, the elder of Dublin's two medieval cathedrals, was founded under which Viking king?
Sitric Silkenbeard
Sitric Silkenbeard, the Hiberno-Norse king of Dublin, probably founded Christ Church sometime after making a pilgrimage to Rome in 1028.
Q 26From the 1970s, a state company bought up much of Dublin's Temple Bar to build what?
A transport hub
A transport hub was CIÉ's plan, but it let the buildings cheaply to artists meanwhile, and the scheme was dropped as Temple Bar became Dublin's cultural quarter.
Q 27Where was Dublin's Molly Malone statue unveiled in 1988?
Grafton Street
Grafton Street was the statue's home until 2014, when Luas tram works moved it to nearby Suffolk Street.
Q 28Bloomsday, celebrated in Dublin every 16 June, honours which novel set on that day?
Ulysses
Ulysses follows Leopold Bloom through Dublin on 16 June 1904, a date Joyce chose for its link to his romance with Nora Barnacle.
Q 29Which three Dublin-born writers won the Nobel Prize in Literature?
Yeats, Shaw and Beckett
Yeats, Shaw and Beckett all won the prize, but Shaw accepted the honour and refused the money that came with it.
Q 30Which Dublin theatre, co-founded by Lady Gregory in 1904, became Ireland's national theatre?
The Abbey Theatre
The Abbey Theatre's 1907 premiere of The Playboy of the Western World set off riots, and the actors had to finish the play in dumbshow.