50 free Istanbul trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Istanbul has been Byzantium, Constantinople and capital of four empires, and it is still the only major city that sits on two continents. This quiz starts with the Greek colonists of 657 BC and works through Constantine's New Rome, the Fourth Crusade, Mehmed II dragging his fleet over a hill in 1453, Suleiman's architect Sinan, the last sultan's exile and the 1930 law that made the name official. The landmarks get their due: Hagia Sophia and its changing status, the Blue Mosque's six minarets, Topkapı and Dolmabahçe, the Grand Bazaar's 4,000 shops, the Galata Tower and its legendary glider, the Basilica Cistern's Medusa heads, the Maiden's Tower, the Bosphorus bridges and the Marmaray tunnel. There are questions on Galatasaray versus Fenerbahçe, the 2005 Champions League final, the Orient Express, gecekondus, yalıs and the city's famous street cats. Easy questions ask which strait the city straddles and what the Blue Mosque is; hard ones want Orban's nationality, the founding year of Galatasaray High School and what the Grand Bazaar first sold. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its monuments, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our Turkey and Ancient Rome quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Istanbul lies on the strait between the Black Sea and which smaller inland sea?
The Sea of Marmara
About two-thirds of the city's 15 million people live on the European shore and the rest in Asia, making it a city on two continents.
Q 02Which city replaced Istanbul as Turkey's seat of government in 1923?
Ankara
The Republic chose Ankara as capital in 1923, but Istanbul remains the economic, cultural and historical centre.
Q 03The city was founded around 657 BC by Greek colonists from Megara under what name?
Byzantium
Legend traced the settlers to Byzas, son of Poseidon and the nymph Ceroëssa; a Thracian village called Lygos may have stood there first.
Q 04Which Roman emperor refounded the city in 324 AD, initially calling it New Rome?
Constantine the Great
It was proclaimed capital of the Roman Empire on 11 May 330 and kept his name for 1,600 years.
Q 05The name 'Istanbul' is commonly held to derive from a Medieval Greek phrase meaning what?
To the city
Local Greeks simply said eis tḕn Pólin, since it was the only major city around; the Ottomans also nicknamed it Dersaadet, the 'Gate to Prosperity'.
Q 06Over the 16 centuries after 330 AD the city served as capital of how many empires?
Four
Roman, Byzantine, Latin and Ottoman: the Latin Empire lasted only from the 1204 crusader sack until the Byzantine restoration of 1261.
Q 07Which crusade was diverted in 1204 to sack Constantinople and set up the Latin Empire?
The Fourth
By the time the Byzantines retook the city in 1261 its population had shrunk to about 100,000 from half a million in the 8th century.
Q 08Which Ottoman sultan captured Constantinople on 29 May 1453 after a 55-day siege?
Mehmed II
The last Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI, died in the fighting; the conqueror then styled himself Kayser-i Rûm, the Caesar of Rome.
Q 09During the 1453 siege, how did the Ottomans get their ships past the chain blocking the Golden Horn?
Dragged the fleet overland on greased logs
The fleet slid over the Galata hill on 22 April; the floating chain itself had been ordered by Constantine XI to prevent a repeat of the 1204 crusader breach.
Q 10Orban, who cast a giant bombard for the Ottoman siege of 1453, is usually described as what nationality?
Hungarian
He had first offered his services to the Byzantines, who could not afford him; most of the siege guns were actually made by Turkish engineers such as Saruca.
Q 11Who was the chief architect of Suleiman the Magnificent's reign, designer of the Süleymaniye?
Mimar Sinan
Suleiman's reign (1520–66) also saw Ottoman ceramics, calligraphy and miniature painting flourish; the city held 570,000 people by 1800.
Q 12The name Constantinople was officially changed to İstanbul in which year, inspiring a later novelty song?
1930
The same Postal Services Law renamed Smyrna as İzmir among many other places; the song 'Istanbul (Not Constantinople)' came in 1953.
Q 13The last Ottoman sultan left the city into exile aboard a British warship in which year?
1922
The Grand National Assembly had abolished the sultanate on 1 November; he died in Sanremo, Italy, in 1926.
Q 21Topkapı Palace was the Ottoman administrative centre until which palace was completed in 1853?
Dolmabahçe
Sultan Abdulmejid I moved the court in 1856; Topkapı kept the treasury, library and mint before becoming a museum in 1924.
Q 22The name Topkapı, given to the palace in the 19th century, means what in Turkish?
Cannon Gate
It was originally the 'New Palace', to distinguish it from the Old Palace at Beyazıt Square; its treasury holds the Spoonmaker's Diamond and the Topkapı Dagger.
Q 23The Grand Bazaar's Turkish name, Kapalıçarşı, translates as what?
Covered Market
It has 61 covered streets and more than 4,000 shops, and in 2014 topped the list of the world's most-visited attractions with over 91 million visitors.
Q 14Which future president launched his political career as mayor of Istanbul in 1994?
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
In 2019 he warned that 'if we fail in Istanbul, we will fail in Turkey', shortly before his party lost the mayoralty to Ekrem İmamoğlu.
Q 15Despite the seven-hills myth, roughly how many hills lie within Istanbul's city limits?
Over 50
The tallest, Aydos, reaches 537 metres; the city's area is over 5,300 square kilometres, coterminous with Istanbul Province.
Q 16What is a native or resident of Istanbul called in English?
Istanbulite
In Turkish it is İstanbullu; the modern name is spelled with a dotted capital İ, which the Turkish alphabet distinguishes from the dotless I.
Q 17Hagia Sophia was completed in AD 537 under which Byzantine emperor?
Justinian I
Designed by the geometers Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles, it was the world's largest interior space and among the first with a fully pendentive dome.
Q 18In which year was Hagia Sophia's museum status revoked and the building redesignated as a mosque?
2020
Its 31-metre dome made it the world's largest cathedral for more than a thousand years, and it became a mosque within hours of the 1453 conquest.
Q 19The Sultan Ahmed Mosque, built 1609–17, is popularly known by the name of which colour?
Blue
Thousands of İznik tiles and painted floral motifs in blue give it the nickname; it stands across from Hagia Sophia on the site of the old Hippodrome.
Q 20The Sultan Ahmed Mosque is unusual for having how many minarets?
Six
Folklore says the architect misheard the sultan's request for 'altın' (gold) minarets as 'altı' (six), a number until then unique to the mosque at Mecca.
Q 24The Grand Bazaar's core began in 1455/56 as a hall for trading which goods?
Textiles and jewels
The sultan's Cevâhir Bedestan, the 'Bedesten of Gems', was endowed to the Hagia Sophia mosque's charitable foundation when it opened in 1461.
Q 25The Spice Bazaar has been Istanbul's main spice market since which century?
The 17th
The open-air Mahmutpasha Bazaar links it to the Grand Bazaar; the spice market dates from 1660.
Q 26The Galata Tower was built in 1348 as a watchtower by colonists from which Italian city?
Genoa
Called the Christea Turris, it was then the tallest building in the city at 66.9 metres; the Ottomans later used it as a prison and a fire lookout.
Q 27Who supposedly strapped on wings in 1638 and glided from the Galata Tower across the strait to Üsküdar?
Hezarfen Ahmed
The 'first intercontinental flight' is of doubtful authenticity, but the name lives on at one of Istanbul's airfields.
Q 28Istanbul's Basilica Cistern is famous for column bases carved with whose head?
Medusa
Texts claim 7,000 enslaved people built it in the 6th century; it was forgotten until 1565, when a French traveller was rowed between its columns and saw fish below.
Q 29The Maiden's Tower on its islet off Üsküdar is also known by the name of which figure from Greek myth?
Leander
Legend also tells of a princess locked there to dodge a prophesied snakebite, only to be killed by an asp hidden in a fruit basket; the tower featured in The World Is Not Enough.
Q 30The first bridge across the Bosphorus, linking Europe and Asia, opened in which year?
1973
It was followed by a second bridge in 1988, the Marmaray rail tunnel in 2013 and the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge and Eurasia road tunnel in 2016.