50 free Havana trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Havana was founded three times before it stuck. Diego Velázquez put it on a swampy south coast in 1514, the settlers tried again by the Almendares River, and only in 1519 did the town settle beside the deep harbour that made it Spain's key to the New World. This quiz follows the story from there: the French corsair who burned the town in 1555, the walls and castles that followed, the 1762 British siege that was traded for Florida, the first railway in Latin America, the USS Maine and the 1902 republic, and the revolution that turned the Habana Hilton into Fidel Castro's headquarters. It also walks the modern city: the 8 km Malecón, El Capitolio and the diamond under its dome, the Hotel Nacional and its 1946 mob summit, Hemingway's Finca Vigía and his fisherman from Cojímar, Buena Vista Social Club, Havana Club rum, Industriales baseball, the 2019 tornado and Camila Cabello's 'Havana'. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Havana and its landmarks, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Cuba quiz next if you want the rest of the island.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Havana is the capital of which country?
Cuba
It is also the largest city in the country and the second-largest metropolitan area in the whole Caribbean.
Q 02Havana overtook which city to become Cuba's capital in 1552?
Santiago
The deep, sheltered harbour was the deciding advantage, and it made Havana the gathering point for treasure galleons heading home to Spain.
Q 03What is the full Spanish name given to the town that became Havana?
San Cristóbal de la Habana
Saint Christopher remains the city's patron saint and its cathedral is dedicated to him.
Q 04The name 'Habana' is thought to come from Habaguanex, who was what?
A Taíno chief
Almost nothing else is known about him, which has kept the etymology a theory rather than a fact.
Q 05Why is the city spelled with a 'v' in English but a 'b' in Spanish?
A sound shift called betacism
In most Spanish dialects the 'b' and 'v' sounds merge, so English writers heard and wrote a 'v'.
Q 06Where did Diego Velázquez first found Havana in 1514?
On the south coast, 69 km away
The low, swampy ground near the Mayabeque River doomed the settlement, and every Spanish attempt to build there failed.
Q 07Which French corsair carried out the first attack that burned Havana, in 1555?
Jacques de Sores
The raid convinced the Spanish Crown to pay for the first fortresses in its main Caribbean cities.
Q 08Which king granted Havana the title of City in 1592?
Philip II
The Crown later dubbed it the 'Key to the New World and Rampart of the West Indies'.
Q 09A 1649 epidemic that killed a third of Havana's population was which disease?
Yellow fever
It arrived on ships from Cartagena, in present-day Colombia.
Q 10By the mid-18th century Havana ranked third in the Americas by population, behind which pair?
Lima and Mexico City
With more than 70,000 residents it was bigger than Boston and New York, and by 1740 it held the only drydock in the New World.
Q 11Which power captured Havana in a 1762 siege during the Seven Years' War?
Britain
More than 50 ships and 11,000 men landed east of the city, and the occupiers immediately opened Havana to trade with their colonies.
Q 12Under the 1763 Treaty of Paris, Spain got Havana back in exchange for what?
Florida
Spain then made Havana the most heavily fortified city in the Americas, starting work on the huge La Cabaña fortress.
Q 13Whose remains were moved to Havana in 1796 and stayed until 1898?
Christopher Columbus
They were shipped from Santo Domingo, then on to Seville Cathedral after Spain lost Cuba.
Q 21Which river crosses Havana from south to north before reaching the sea a few miles west of the bay?
Almendares
The early La Chorrera settlement sat by its mouth and grew into Vedado and Miramar.
Q 22Havana's climate is classed under Köppen as which type?
Tropical savanna
The trade winds keep it tempered, and the temperature seldom drops below 10 °C.
Q 23What rare disaster struck eastern Havana in January 2019?
An EF4 tornado
It was the first F4 or EF4 twister in Cuba since 1940, wrecking at least 90 homes.
Q 14In the 19th century Havana earned which nickname?
Paris of the Antilles
Booming trade with North America paid for theatres and neoclassical mansions.
Q 15Cuba's first railroad, built from Havana in 1837, made it which country in the world to have one?
Seventh
The 51 km line to Bejucal hauled sugar, and it beat Spain itself: Cuba was the first Spanish-speaking country with a railway.
Q 16The sinking of which US battleship in Havana Harbor triggered the Spanish–American War?
USS Maine
Spain gave up Cuba on 12 August 1898, ending its presence in the Americas.
Q 17Havana became the capital of the independent Republic of Cuba in which year?
1902
Its first president, Tomás Estrada Palma, was inaugurated in the city.
Q 18Which Confederate Secretary of State fled to Havana after the American Civil War?
Judah P. Benjamin
Many exiles stayed until Andrew Johnson's amnesty in 1868; slavery itself remained legal in Cuba until 1886.
Q 19Old Havana was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which year?
1982
The area is now the focus of a decades-long restoration led by city historian Eusebio Leal Spengler.
Q 20How many municipalities is Havana divided into?
15
Those boroughs are further split into 105 consejos populares, or wards.
Q 24Which Havana neighbourhood is the city's financial district and home to the University of Havana?
Vedado
It was built up between 1930 and 1960 with high-rise hotels and casinos aimed at American tourists.
Q 25The University of Havana was established in which year?
1728
It was long regarded as a leading institution in the Western Hemisphere and was nationalised soon after the revolution.
Q 26Havana's international airport is named after which figure?
José Martí
It sits about 11 km south of the centre in Boyeros and is the hub of Cubana de Aviación.
Q 27What was the Havana Hilton, opened in 1958, famous for during 1959?
Serving as Fidel Castro's residence
Built for $24 million under Batista, it is now the Hotel Tryp Habana Libre.
Q 28The FOCSA Building of 1956 held which world record when completed?
Tallest concrete structure
The 35-storey block was designed as a city within a city, with 400 flats, a school and a rooftop restaurant.
Q 29The Bacardi Building, finished in 1930, is a celebrated example of which style?
Art Deco
It was nationalised in the early 1960s and restored by an Italian firm in 2001.
Q 30The Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón, built in 1876, holds roughly how many tombs?
Nearly 1 million
It is one of the most famous cemeteries in Latin America and functions as an open-air museum.