European Cities
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50 free European Cities trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Europe packs more famous cities into a small space than any other continent, and almost every one of them has a story: a river it grew up on, a rival it outgrew, a name it used to go by. Knowing which city is the biggest in a country is often harder than it sounds, because the capital and the largest city are not always the same place. This quiz covers the continent's biggest cities by population, the well-known second cities, great ports, former capitals and university towns, along with the landmarks, festivals, foods and inventions that put them on the map. The questions start with household names and work up to places that only keen travellers and geography fans will pin down. It is for anyone getting ready for a pub quiz, planning a trip, or testing how well they really know the map of Europe. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so a wrong guess still teaches something.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which city, known in the West as Constantinople until the 1930s, has the largest population of any in Europe?
Istanbul
Istanbul is home to over 15 million people, about two-thirds of them on the European side of the Bosphorus and the rest in Asia. Its Turkish name was made official in 1930.
Q 02Which Italian city is spread across 118 small islands, with canals and footbridges where streets would be?
Venice
Venice stands on tree trunks: its builders drove closely spaced alder piles through the lagoon mud into hard clay, then laid stone foundations on top.
Q 03In which Spanish city did work begin in 1882 on the Sagrada Família, the basilica designed by Antoni Gaudí?
Barcelona
Barcelona is where Gaudí died in 1926, struck by a tram and at first taken for a beggar. Less than a quarter of his basilica was finished at the time.
Q 04Which port city on the Mersey estuary was the birthplace of the Beatles, who formed there in 1960?
Liverpool
Liverpool artists have had more UK number one singles than those of any other city in the world. Its 1960s sound, with the Beatles out in front, was known as Merseybeat.
Q 05Which German city hosts Oktoberfest, the giant beer festival that actually begins in the middle of September?
Munich
Munich held the first Oktoberfest on 12 October 1810 to celebrate a royal wedding, and the festival ground was named Therese's Meadow after the bride.
Q 06Which southern Italian city, lying close to Mount Vesuvius, is the home of the pizza Margherita?
Naples
Naples is where, legend holds, the pizza maker Raffaele Esposito topped a pizza in the colours of the Italian flag for the visiting Queen Margherita in 1889.
Q 07Which walled city on the Adriatic Sea stood in for King's Landing in the TV series Game of Thrones?
Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik was once the capital of its own maritime republic, under the name Ragusa, and grew rich on sea trade. UNESCO listed its old city in 1979.
Q 08Which capital city on the Danube was created in 1873 by uniting three towns, two of which form the modern name?
Budapest
Budapest joined hilly Buda and Óbuda on the western side of the river with the much larger Pest, which spreads over a flat plain on the opposite bank.
Q 09Which banking hub is the largest city in Switzerland, although the federal government sits in Bern?
Zurich
Zurich has taken its turn, though: it served as the Swiss federal capital for 1839–40 and again for 1845–46.
Q 10Which capital, home to Red Square and Saint Basil's Cathedral, is the most populous city entirely within Europe?
Moscow
Moscow is also the largest city on the European continent by land area. It was first documented in 1147, and the first walls of its Kremlin went up in the 1150s.
Q 11Which port on the Elbe, the second-largest city in Germany, is where the Beatles played clubs before fame?
Hamburg
Hamburg has around 2,500 bridges across its rivers and canals, more than any other city in Europe.
Q 12Which English city, the second-largest in Britain, gave the world Cadbury chocolate and the band Black Sabbath?
Birmingham
Birmingham is where John Cadbury, a Quaker, began selling tea, coffee and drinking chocolate from a shop in Bull Street in 1824.
Q 13Which Mediterranean port, France's second most populous city, was founded by Greek settlers around 600 BC?
Marseille
Marseille is the oldest city in France, and it gave the national anthem its name: volunteers from the city sang the song on their march north in 1792.
Q 21Which Italian city, built on seven hills, has an entire independent country inside its municipal boundaries?
Rome
Rome contains Vatican City, the smallest country in the world and the only existing example of a country within a city.
Q 22Which Tuscan city, ruled for generations by the Medici family, is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance?
Florence
Florence also spent six years as the capital of the newly united Kingdom of Italy, from 1865 to 1871.
Q 23Which capital, the second-largest city in the European Union, has a bear and a strawberry tree on its coat of arms?
Madrid
Madrid stands about 650 metres above sea level, which makes it the second-highest capital in Europe after little Andorra la Vella.
Q 14Which city, Italy's second-largest, is home to La Scala opera house and Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper?
Milan
Milan keeps the mural where Leonardo painted it in the 1490s: on the end wall of a convent dining hall at Santa Maria delle Grazie.
Q 15Which city, the second-largest in Russia, was known as Leningrad for most of the 20th century?
St Petersburg
St Petersburg is the world's northernmost city of more than a million people. It took the name Leningrad in 1924 and voted to drop it in a 1991 referendum.
Q 16Which city, the second-largest in Poland, served as the official Polish capital until 1596?
Kraków
Kraków saw its Old Town become one of the very first UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1978, the same year its archbishop was elected Pope John Paul II.
Q 17Which city, the second-largest in the Netherlands, is home to the largest seaport in Europe?
Rotterdam
Rotterdam was bombed by Germany on 14 May 1940, and under the threat of raids on more cities the Dutch army capitulated the next day.
Q 18Which capital opened the world's first underground railway in 1863, with steam trains and gas-lit carriages?
London
London ran its first underground trains between Paddington and Farringdon, in wooden carriages hauled by steam locomotives.
Q 19Which city, the most populous in the European Union, became the capital of a reunified country in 1990?
Berlin
Berlin is unusually green for its size: about a third of the city's area is made up of forests, parks and gardens, rivers, canals and lakes.
Q 20Which capital is divided into twenty arrondissements that spiral out from the centre like a snail shell?
Paris
Paris numbers its arrondissements in a clockwise spiral that starts in the middle of the city, with the first on the Right Bank of the Seine.
Q 24Which capital has more than 100 km of canals, including a 17th-century ring of three that UNESCO listed in 2010?
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the official capital of the Netherlands but not its seat of government: the main institutions and the foreign embassies are in The Hague.
Q 25Which capital, nicknamed the City of a Hundred Spires, has an astronomical clock dating back to 1410?
Prague
Prague owes the nickname to a count by the 19th-century mathematician Bernard Bolzano; a modern estimate puts the number of spires nearer 500.
Q 26Which Atlantic port city on the Tagus was almost completely destroyed by an earthquake on All Saints' Day 1755?
Lisbon
Lisbon was struck at about 9:40 on the morning of 1 November, and the fires and tsunami that followed finished what the shaking began.
Q 27Which Scandinavian capital stretches across fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren flows into the Baltic Sea?
Stockholm
Stockholm began on the central island that is its Old Town, Gamla Stan, which was built up from the middle of the 13th century.
Q 28Which Scottish city, with a castle perched on a volcanic plug, hosts the Fringe arts festival every August?
Edinburgh
Edinburgh has held the Fringe since 1947, when it began as an unofficial offshoot of the International Festival. It is the world's largest performing arts festival.
Q 29Which city on the River Clyde, once the world centre of shipbuilding, is the most populous in Scotland?
Glasgow
Glasgow had to engineer its way to that title: the Clyde was dredged and deepened before seagoing ships could reach the city at all.
Q 30Which German city on the Rhine has a twin-spired cathedral that was begun in 1248 and finished only in 1880?
Cologne
Cologne also gave perfume a name: in 1709 Johann Maria Farina mixed a light scent there and called it Eau de Cologne in honour of his new hometown.