France
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149 free France trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
44 free France trivia questions with answers. How well do you really know France? This French trivia quiz runs to 149 questions and covers the whole country: the Revolution and the Sun King, Joan of Arc and D-Day, the baguette and Champagne, the Louvre and Mont-Saint-Michel, the TGV, the Tour de France and the 1998 World Cup, plus the language itself and the Académie that guards it. It starts gently with questions anyone who has visited Paris can manage, then climbs to deep cuts about de Gaulle's cheese count and the original definition of the metre. It works for a pub quiz round, a French class, or a rainy Sunday. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question shows its citation, so when a question surprises you, you can see exactly where the fact comes from.
30 of 149 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Joan of Arc is known as the Maid of which city, whose English siege she helped break in 1429?
Orléans
Orléans had been under English siege for months when the teenage Joan arrived with a relief army in April 1429; the siege was soon lifted, and Charles VII was crowned at Reims that summer.
Q 02Which river is the longest entirely within France?
Loire
The Loire rises in the Massif Central and stays in France all the way to the sea, unlike the Rhône, which begins at a glacier in the Swiss Alps.
Q 03On what date does France celebrate its National Day, often referred to as Bastille Day?
July 14th
July 14th marks the storming of the Bastille in 1789, but the French never say Bastille Day: the holiday, official only since 1880, is simply 'le 14 juillet' or 'la fête nationale'.
Q 04Which mountain range forms France's border with Spain?
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees became the agreed frontier in 1659, when Louis XIV's France and Philip IV's Spain ended a long war with a peace named after the mountains, the Treaty of the Pyrenees.
Q 05Approximately how tall is the Eiffel Tower, including its antenna?
330 meters
The Eiffel Tower stands about 330 meters tall after a new antenna was added in 2022; at its 1889 completion it was roughly 300 meters, then the world's tallest structure.
Q 06The French flag's blue, white and red are often said to represent which Revolutionary values?
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity is a later reading of the colours: the flag began in 1789 by adding the white of the monarchy to the blue and red worn by the capital's revolutionary militia.
Q 07'La Marseillaise' was written in 1792 as a war song for the Army of the Rhine in which city?
Strasbourg
Strasbourg's mayor asked army engineer Rouget de Lisle for a marching song in April 1792; it got its name later, when volunteers from Marseille sang it on their march to the capital.
Q 08Which wine region of France lends its name to the sparkling wine it makes?
Champagne
Champagne, the region around Reims and Épernay in northeastern France, gives the sparkling wine its name; only wine made there under AOC rules, with a second fermentation in the bottle, may use it.
Q 09Which French designer popularised the 'little black dress' in the 1920s?
Coco Chanel
Coco Chanel showed a plain black dress in Vogue in 1926, when black was reserved mainly for mourning; the magazine dubbed it 'Chanel's Ford', a dress for everyone, like the Model T.
Q 10Which mountain on the Franco-Italian border is the highest peak in the Alps?
Mont Blanc
Mont Blanc means 'white mountain': its summit is a permanent dome of ice, and glaciers such as the Mer de Glace flow down from it toward the Chamonix valley.
Q 11On which island was Napoleon Bonaparte born in 1769, to a family of Italian origin?
Corsica
Napoleon was born in Ajaccio, Corsica, on 15 August 1769, barely a year after Genoa ceded the island to France; born a little earlier, the future emperor would not have been French.
Q 12Which empress did Napoleon crown at his 1804 coronation, moments after crowning himself?
Joséphine
Joséphine knelt before Napoleon, who had just set the crown on his own head, and he crowned her himself; David's vast painting of the ceremony in Notre-Dame shows exactly that moment.
Q 13Which Paris gallery of Impressionist masterpieces occupies a former railway station?
The Musée d'Orsay
Q 21Which part of Notre-Dame de Paris collapsed in the 2019 fire, five years before the cathedral reopened?
The spire
The spire, a 19th-century addition of oak sheathed in lead, came down in flames on 15 April 2019 along with most of the roof; the bell towers, rose windows and great organ survived.
Q 22Which French scientist gave his name to the process of heating milk and wine to kill bacteria?
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur developed pasteurisation in the 1860s, first to stop wine spoiling; in 1885 he also gave the first rabies vaccine to nine-year-old Joseph Meister, who survived a rabid dog's bites.
Q 23Marie Curie named the first element she and Pierre discovered after which country?
Poland
The Musée d'Orsay opened in 1986 in the Gare d'Orsay, a grand station of 1900 that changes in rail technology soon made obsolete; in 1970 it narrowly escaped demolition for a hotel.
Q 14The Tour de France was first organised in 1903 for what commercial purpose?
To sell more newspapers
To sell more newspapers was the whole idea: the sports daily L'Auto, forerunner of today's L'Équipe, launched the race to win a circulation war, and its sales soared while its rival Le Vélo soon went out of business.
Q 15Because of the shape of its mainland, France is commonly nicknamed what?
The Hexagon
The Hexagon suits the mainland's six-sided outline, three sides of coast and three of land borders; in French, 'l'Hexagone' is everyday shorthand for mainland France.
Q 16Which Norman port city was rebuilt in concrete by Auguste Perret after 1944 bombing?
Le Havre
Le Havre was largely destroyed in 1944 by Allied bombing during the battle to free Normandy; Auguste Perret's team rebuilt it in concrete, and UNESCO listed the new centre in 2005.
Q 17In 2022 UNESCO added the know-how of which French food to its Intangible Heritage list?
The baguette
The baguette's know-how joined UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2022; the listing notes it has just four ingredients, flour, water, salt and yeast or leaven, yet every baker's loaf differs.
Q 18The croissant was inspired by the kipferl, a crescent pastry from which country?
Austria
Austria's kipferl reached Paris in the late 1830s, when the Austrian August Zang opened a bakery on the rue de Richelieu; French bakers later remade his crescent in flaky, buttery dough.
Q 19The forty members of which French body, founded in 1635, are nicknamed 'the immortals'?
The Académie française
The Académie française, keeper of the official French dictionary, calls its forty members 'immortals', yet the body itself was abolished in 1793 during the Revolution and only later restored.
Q 20Which tidal island in Normandy is topped by a medieval Benedictine abbey?
Mont-Saint-Michel
Mont-Saint-Michel's Benedictine abbey dates from 966; after the Revolution it was turned into a prison, which closed only in 1863, before being restored as a monument.
Polonium, discovered in 1898, was named for Poland, her homeland, which was then partitioned and had no independent state; in 1906 she became the first woman professor at the University of Paris.
Q 24The Palace of Versailles began life as what kind of building for Louis XIII?
A hunting lodge
A hunting lodge was how Versailles began under Louis XIII; his son Louis XIV turned it into a palace and moved the court and government there in 1682, and the Revolution drove the royal family out in 1789.
Q 25Which player scored two headed goals in France's 3–0 win over Brazil in the 1998 World Cup final?
Zinedine Zidane
Zinedine Zidane headed in two first-half corners at the Stade de France on 12 July 1998, and Emmanuel Petit added a third in injury time for France's first world title.
Q 26Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in 1431 in which French city?
Rouen
Joan of Arc was burned in Rouen on 30 May 1431, aged about nineteen, after a pro-English church court convicted her of heresy; a retrial overturned the verdict in 1456.
Q 27The Bayeux Tapestry, nearly 70 metres long, tells the story of which event?
The Norman Conquest of England
The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the Norman Conquest of England, from Harold's oath to William through the Battle of Hastings in 1066; despite its name it is wool embroidery on linen, not a woven tapestry.
Q 28What top prize does the Cannes Film Festival hand out?
The Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or was first awarded in 1955, to the American film Marty; jeweller Lucienne Lazon designed it around the palm that appears on the coat of arms of Cannes.
Q 29The French Revolution is generally said to have ended in 1799 with which event?
The coup of 18 Brumaire
The coup of 18 Brumaire is named for its date in the Revolutionary calendar, 9 November 1799; it handed power to three provisional consuls, and one of them soon ruled France alone.
Q 30Which language of southern France was the tongue of the medieval troubadours?
Occitan
Occitan is the 'langue d'oc', named for oc, its word for yes; northern French said oïl instead, the ancestor of today's oui.