Guadeloupe
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40 free Guadeloupe trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Guadeloupe is a piece of France in the middle of the Caribbean: an archipelago with rainforest, an active volcano, coral reefs and a history that runs from Columbus through the sugar plantations and the long fight against slavery. This quiz turns the best Guadeloupe fun facts into questions. It covers the geography and wildlife of the archipelago, the colonial powers that traded it, the food and music that grew up there, and the athletes, writers and musicians it has produced. It is written for travellers planning a trip, students of French and Caribbean history, and anyone who enjoys a surprising fact. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
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Q 01Seen from above, Guadeloupe's two main islands together form the shape of which creature?
A butterfly
A butterfly is how Guadeloupe looks from the air: a mountainous western wing and a flatter eastern wing, split by a narrow sea channel.
Q 02Which tropical fruit did Christopher Columbus first encounter on Guadeloupe in November 1493?
Pineapple
Pineapple was new to the Old World when Columbus met it on Guadeloupe. He carried the plant back across the Atlantic and called it the pine of the Indians.
Q 03Which BBC crime series films its fictional island of Saint Marie in Deshaies on Guadeloupe?
Death in Paradise
Death in Paradise turns the commune of Deshaies into the town of Honoré, and the show's popularity has helped to bring more tourists to Guadeloupe.
Q 04Which currency do shoppers use on Guadeloupe, an overseas department of France in the Caribbean?
The euro
The euro is Guadeloupe's money because the islands are legally part of France and the European Union, although they sit outside the Schengen travel area.
Q 05In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, France gave up which vast territory but won back sugar-rich Guadeloupe?
Canada
Canada was judged the lesser prize. Guadeloupe produced about £6 million of sugar a year, and France considered the small island colony the more valuable of the two.
Q 06Which Guadeloupe-born judo heavyweight helped light the cauldron at the 2024 Paris Olympics?
Teddy Riner
Teddy Riner, born in Les Abymes, lit the cauldron in the Tuileries Garden and then won his third individual Olympic gold in the over-100 kg class at the same Games.
Q 07Which Guadeloupe-born defender scored both France goals in the 1998 World Cup semi-final?
Lilian Thuram
Lilian Thuram scored the only two goals of his long international career that night, after his own mistake had let Croatia take the lead.
Q 08Which French ocean explorer gives his name to the marine reserve around Guadeloupe's Pigeon Islands?
Jacques Cousteau
Jacques Cousteau found the reefs in 1959 while testing his diving saucer and asked for the site to be protected. Local traders soon attached his name to it.
Q 09Which Scandinavian kingdom was handed Guadeloupe by Britain in 1813 and gave it back a year later?
Sweden
Sweden received 24 million francs from Britain when the island returned to France. The money became the Guadeloupe Fund, which paid the Swedish royal house until 1983.
Q 10Which Guadeloupe-born sprinter won both the 200 metres and 400 metres at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics?
Marie-José Pérec
Marie-José Pérec was only the second woman to complete that Olympic double. She had left Guadeloupe for Paris at 16 and won three Olympic golds in all.
Q 11Guadeloupe's Indigenous people called the islands Karukera, a name usually translated as what?
Island of beautiful waters
Island of beautiful waters was the Arawakan-speaking islanders' own name for their home. Columbus replaced it in 1493 with the name of a shrine to the Virgin Mary.
Q 12Columbus named Guadeloupe in 1493 after a shrine to the Virgin Mary in which country?
Spain
Spain is home to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Extremadura, which gave the island its name. Mexico's Virgin of Guadalupe dates from 1531, well after Columbus.
Q 13Which city is the capital of Guadeloupe, although Pointe-à-Pitre is its main business centre?
Basse-Terre
Q 21What device did the revolutionary commissioner Victor Hugues ship to Guadeloupe from France in 1794?
A guillotine
A guillotine came with Hugues, who used it to execute alleged counter-revolutionaries after his expedition retook the colony and abolished slavery there.
Q 22Which active volcano on Guadeloupe is the highest peak in the Lesser Antilles?
La Soufrière
La Soufrière, also called La Grande Soufrière, rises 1,467 m. In 1976 its tremors forced more than 70,000 people to evacuate before an eruption far milder than predicted.
Q 23Which round, flat island of Guadeloupe did Columbus name after his flagship in 1493?
Marie-Galante
Basse-Terre holds the prefecture, yet Guadeloupe's commerce runs through Pointe-à-Pitre. It shares its name with the mountainous western island on which it stands.
Q 14Which narrow strait, about 7.5 km long, separates Guadeloupe's two main islands?
Rivière Salée
Rivière Salée translates as salt river, but it is an arm of the sea, linking the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin in the north to the Petit Cul-de-Sac Marin in the south.
Q 15Gwo ka, the folk music born among Guadeloupe's enslaved Africans, is built around which instruments?
Hand drums
Hand drums give gwo ka its name, Creole for big drum. When the enslaved were forbidden drums, singers are thought to have imitated the beat with a vocal technique called bouladjèl.
Q 16Which dance music genre did Kassav', a band formed by Guadeloupean musicians in 1979, pioneer?
Zouk
Zouk grew out of Kassav's wish to modernise the island's traditional music by blending it with contemporary influences, keeping Guadeloupe's gwoka rhythm at its root.
Q 17Which poet and diplomat born in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe won the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature?
Saint-John Perse
Saint-John Perse was the pseudonym of Alexis Leger, who published his poetry under an invented name while he worked as a French diplomat.
Q 18Which Guadeloupean novelist won the 2018 New Academy Prize, a one-off alternative to the Nobel?
Maryse Condé
Maryse Condé, the youngest of eight children from Pointe-à-Pitre, was praised by the jury as a grand storyteller of the ravages of colonialism.
Q 19Which Guadeloupe-born composer, the son of an enslaved woman, was also a celebrated fencer in Paris?
Joseph Bologne
Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, won a fencing contest that earned him a place in the king's guard. He was a contemporary of Mozart.
Q 20Which abolitionist wrote the 1848 French decree that ended slavery in Guadeloupe?
Victor Schœlcher
Victor Schœlcher wrote the decree as under-secretary of state for the colonies, and it also made the freed people citizens. His remains now lie in the Panthéon in Paris.
Marie-Galante honours the ship Marigalante, or gallant Mary. Locals call the island the Big Biscuit for its shape, and oxen turned its cane mills before windmills arrived in 1780.
Q 24Guadeloupe's island of La Désirade housed sufferers of which disease from the 1700s until the 1950s?
Leprosy
Leprosy patients were sent to a hospital at the island's remote eastern end, where they endured harsh living conditions. The ruins of the colony still stand.
Q 25Which mammal, long the emblem of Guadeloupe National Park, turned out to be an introduced species?
Raccoon
Raccoon populations on Guadeloupe were long classed as a unique island species, Procyon minor. Analyses published in 1999 showed they were common raccoons brought in from elsewhere.
Q 26Guadeloupe's only endemic bird, an all-black forest species, belongs to which bird family?
Woodpeckers
Woodpeckers have one species found only on Guadeloupe, known in Creole as the Tapeur, or one who knocks. No other member of the family lives in the Lesser Antilles.
Q 27Which island north of Guadeloupe split from its administration in 2007, alongside St Martin?
Saint-Barthélemy
Saint-Barthélemy voted in 2003 to secede and became a separate French overseas collectivity, although it lies more than 200 km north-west of Guadeloupe.
Q 28The solo Route du Rhum yacht race to Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe starts from which Breton port?
Saint-Malo
Saint-Malo sends the fleet off every four years in November. Each sailor crosses the Atlantic single-handed, which makes the race one of French sport's great sailing events.
Q 29Which officer led Guadeloupe's 1802 revolt against the return of slavery and died at Matouba?
Louis Delgrès
Louis Delgrès and his followers set off their own gunpowder stores rather than surrender, hoping to take as many of the attacking French troops with them as they could.
Q 30Which British admiral defeated a French fleet near Guadeloupe at the 1782 Battle of the Saintes?
George Rodney
George Rodney captured the French flagship and its admiral, de Grasse, ending a planned invasion of Jamaica. The battle is named after Guadeloupe's Îles des Saintes.