European Capital Cities Trivia
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99 free European Capital Cities trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This European capital cities trivia quiz goes well beyond 'what is the capital of Slovakia'. It covers all corners of the continent — Reykjavík in the north, Valletta in the south, Lisbon in the west and Moscow, Kyiv and Minsk in the east — plus the microstates: Vaduz, Andorra la Vella, Monaco and the City of San Marino. You will be asked which capital is the highest in Europe, which is the last divided one, which pair are the closest together, which country's constitutional capital is not its seat of government, which cities used to be called Christiania, Reval, Titograd and Angora, which rivers Budapest, Warsaw, Bucharest and Belgrade stand on, and why Bern is only a 'federal city'. Some questions are straightforward capital-matching for beginners; the rest are for people who have actually walked these cities. BrainPickle also has a separate quiz on European geography and one on world capitals. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and each question carries a citation to the page it came from.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which European capital is the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state?
Reykjavík
Reykjavík. Its Old Norse name means 'bay of smoke', said to have been given by early settlers who saw steam rising from the hot springs nearby.
Q 02Which island capital is named after the commander who held off an Ottoman siege in 1565?
Valletta
Valletta. Jean de Valette laid the first stone of the new fortress city in 1566, within months of the siege, but died two years later and never saw it finished.
Q 03Malta's capital was built in the 16th century by which order?
The Knights Hospitaller
The Knights Hospitaller. Having survived the Ottoman siege of 1565, the order built the city as its fortress and ruled Malta until French forces expelled it in 1798.
Q 04Which country has no official capital, only a 'federal city' that acts as its de facto capital?
Switzerland
Switzerland. To avoid concentrating power, its founders named no capital; in 1848 parliament simply chose Bern, ahead of Zurich and Lucerne, as the 'federal city' where it would sit.
Q 05Bern's old town is surrounded by which river?
The Aare
The Aare. The river bends around the old town's narrow peninsula on three sides, which is why the city's founder chose the spot in 1191: it was easy to defend.
Q 06The Dutch government and parliament sit in The Hague, but which city is the official capital of the Netherlands?
Amsterdam
Amsterdam. It grew up around a dam built across the river Amstel to control flooding, and the dam gave the city its name.
Q 07Which European capital has fewer residents than the neighbouring town of Schaan, the largest in its country?
Vaduz
Vaduz. Liechtenstein's capital has under 6,000 people, and its reigning prince lives in the castle on the cliff above, where the national day opens each August with speeches on the lawn.
Q 08Which microstate's capital, higher even than Madrid, is the highest capital city in Europe?
Andorra la Vella
Andorra la Vella. At 1,023 m in a Pyrenean valley it stands well above Madrid's 655 m, and the mountains leave Andorra with no railway and no commercial airport of its own.
Q 09Hungary's capital was formed in 1873 from two cities facing each other across the Danube and which third, older town?
Óbuda
Óbuda. Its name means 'Old Buda', yet when the three towns merged the new city took its name from the other two.
Q 10Which two capitals on the Danube lie closest together?
Vienna and Bratislava
Vienna and Bratislava. Slovakia's capital sits right against the Austrian border, where three countries meet, so the two cities are only 50 to 60 km apart along the Danube.
Q 11Which Balkan city became a national capital when a breakaway province declared independence from Serbia in 2008?
Pristina
Pristina. Kosovo declared independence on 17 February 2008, but Serbia has never accepted it, so the city's status as a national capital is still disputed.
Q 12Which is the last divided capital in Europe?
Nicosia
Nicosia. A UN buffer zone, in places only a few metres wide, cuts through the old town, and until crossings began opening in 2003 residents could not pass from one side to the other.
Q 13Which capital's Palace of the Parliament, begun by a communist dictator in 1984, is listed as the world's heaviest building?
Bucharest
Bucharest. Nicolae Ceaușescu ordered the palace, which holds some 700,000 tonnes of steel and bronze, but he was overthrown in 1989, years before it was finished.
Q 21Which capital spans fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren meets the Baltic?
Stockholm
Stockholm. Birger Jarl is said to have founded it in the 13th century to guard the lake's outlet against raiders coming in from the sea.
Q 22Copenhagen is connected to which Swedish city by the Øresund Bridge?
Malmö
Malmö. The link leaves Sweden as a bridge but ends as a tunnel: halfway across, at an artificial island, it dives under the strait to stay clear of planes using Copenhagen's airport.
Q 23Dublin stands at the mouth of which river?
The Liffey
The Liffey. Dublin's name comes from the Irish for 'black pool', a reference to the dark tidal water of the river at the spot where the town grew up.
Q 14What was Sofia called in Roman times?
Serdica
Serdica. The Romans named it for the Serdi, the tribe living there; the modern name, in use from the 14th century, was borrowed from the city's church of Saint Sophia.
Q 15Just outside which capital do old limestone mine tunnels hold the world's largest wine cellar, with over 1.5 million bottles?
Chișinău
Chișinău. Moldova's capital, long known abroad by its Russian name Kishinev, has the Mileștii Mici cellars on its doorstep, where the rock keeps the wine at a steady 12 to 14 °C all year.
Q 16Tallinn was known to most of the world by which name from the 13th century until the early 20th?
Reval
Reval. The name spread after Danish crusaders took the site in 1219, and the Estonians' own name for the town, Tallinn, is thought to mean 'Danish fort'.
Q 17Which Art Nouveau-rich Baltic capital was European Capital of Culture in 2014?
Riga
Riga. About a third of the buildings in its centre are Art Nouveau, put up in a boom between 1904 and 1914, and UNESCO rates the collection the finest in Europe.
Q 18Which capital contains Užupis, an artists' quarter that declared itself an independent republic on April Fools' Day 1997?
Vilnius
Vilnius. The joke has lasted: the 'republic' keeps its own constitution, currency, anthem and government, and marks its independence every 1 April.
Q 19In 1812 Russia's tsar made Helsinki the capital of Finland in place of which older city?
Turku
Turku. Alexander I wanted the capital farther from Sweden and nearer St Petersburg; Helsinki, still Helsingfors to its Swedish speakers, is officially bilingual to this day.
Q 20Which capital was called Christiania, after a Danish king, until 1925?
Oslo
Oslo. Christian IV rebuilt the city after a fire in 1624 and named it for himself; two decades after Norway became independent again, the old name was restored.
Q 24Warsaw became Poland's capital in 1596 when Sigismund III moved his court from which city?
Kraków
Kraków. It had been the seat of Poland's monarchs since the Middle Ages; Warsaw then served as capital of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until the state was partitioned out of existence in 1795.
Q 25Ljubljana's city symbol, seen on its castle tower and a famous bridge, is what creature?
A dragon
A dragon. In one legend Jason and the Argonauts, fleeing with the Golden Fleece, killed a monster in the marshes here, long before the Romans built their town of Emona on the site.
Q 26Which capital is home to the Museum of Broken Relationships, which displays mementoes of failed love affairs?
Zagreb
Zagreb. Anyone can contribute: the collection is built from objects and stories sent in by the public, and it has toured the world and opened a second home in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Q 27Which capital is nicknamed the 'Jerusalem of Europe' for its mosque, two churches and synagogue in one neighbourhood?
Sarajevo
Sarajevo. The city that prided itself on four faiths sharing a few streets was besieged from 1992 to 1996, the longest siege of a capital in modern history.
Q 28Belgrade stands at the confluence of the Danube and which other river?
The Sava
The Sava. Belgrade's fortress stands on the ridge above the meeting of the two rivers, a crossing so prized that the city fell to the Ottomans in 1521 and was fought over for centuries afterwards.
Q 29Podgorica, capital of Montenegro, was known by what name from 1946 to 1992?
Titograd
Titograd. It was renamed for Yugoslavia's leader Josip Broz Tito in 1946, when it became the capital of the Montenegrin republic, and took its old name back in 1992 as Yugoslavia broke apart.
Q 30Mother Teresa came from an Albanian family, but in which present-day capital was she born in 1910?
Skopje
Skopje. It was then the Ottoman town of Üsküp; at eighteen she left to join an Irish order of nuns, trained for a few months in Dublin and sailed for India.