Jerusalem Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
55 free Jerusalem trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Jerusalem has been captured and recaptured 44 times, and this quiz covers most of the reasons why. It runs from the Gihon Spring settlement of 3000 BCE and King David through the Babylonians, Pompey, the destruction of the Second Temple, Hadrian's Aelia Capitolina, the caliphs, Crusaders and Saladin, Suleiman's walls, the British Mandate, the 1947 partition plan and the divided city of 1949 to 1967. The Old City gets close attention: its four quarters and seven gates, the Western Wall's hidden courses, the Dome of the Rock's octagon and gilded roof, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre's shared patriarchates and hereditary keyholders, the Via Dolorosa's fourteen stations, the Mount of Olives cemetery and the valleys of Kidron and Hinnom. Beyond the walls there are questions on the Knesset, Yad Vashem, the Shrine of the Book, Teddy Kollek, Beitar Jerusalem, the Marathon, Mahane Yehuda's closing bugle and the 2013 snowstorm. Easy questions ask which three religions hold the city holy and what the Knesset is; hard ones want the Canaanite god behind the name and how many wall courses lie underground. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its sites, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our Bible and Ancient Rome quizzes next.
30 of 55 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jerusalem sits on a plateau in which upland region, between the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea?
The Judaean Hills
The Judaean Hills form a watershed: Jerusalem's western slopes catch the Mediterranean rain, while the land just east of the city lies in a rain shadow and falls away as desert toward the Dead Sea.
Q 02Muslims first prayed facing Jerusalem before turning toward which city?
Mecca
Mecca: tradition says the order to turn came in the middle of a prayer in Medina, more than a year after the move there, and the mosque where it happened is still called the Mosque of the Two Qiblas.
Q 03Which international contest did Jerusalem host in 1979 and 1999?
Eurovision
Eurovision: Israel won in 1978 and again at home in Jerusalem in 1979, then declined to host twice running, and the next contest fell on a national memorial day, so the reigning champions did not even enter.
Q 04Many scholars trace the name Jerusalem to which Canaanite god of dusk?
Shalem
Shalem, twin of the dawn god Shahar, is widely proposed as the root of Urusalim, the city's name in Egypt's Amarna letters. The same consonants give shalom, hence the traditional reading 'city of peace'.
Q 05Which name, first used for a Jebusite fortress, became a poetic byword for all Jerusalem?
Zion
Zion is a name that kept moving: first the fortress on the south-eastern ridge, then the Temple hill, and finally the western hill that is still called Mount Zion today.
Q 06What is the most common Arabic name for Jerusalem, meaning 'the holy'?
Al-Quds
Al-Quds is a latecomer, first recorded centuries after the Arab conquest; earlier writers called the city Bayt al-Maqdis, 'the holy house', a name that echoes the Hebrew term for the Temple.
Q 07According to the Hebrew Bible, which king captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites and made it his capital?
David
David took the Jebusite stronghold, in one version of the biblical account by sending his men up a water shaft.
Q 08Which empire destroyed Jerusalem's First Temple in the early 6th century BCE?
Babylonian
Babylonian forces under Nebuchadnezzar burned the Temple along with the rest of the city and deported Judah's elite to Babylon, the start of the Babylonian exile.
Q 09Which Roman general brought Jerusalem under the Republic's rule in 63 BCE?
Pompey
Pompey was drawn in by two Hasmonean brothers fighting over the throne, stormed the Temple precinct after a three-month siege and walked into the Holy of Holies, yet left its treasure untouched.
Q 10Which Roman general, later emperor, led the siege that destroyed Jerusalem's Second Temple?
Titus
Titus: the arch built in his honour in Rome shows soldiers carrying off the Temple's menorah, and that carving became the model for the emblem of the State of Israel.
Q 11Which name did Emperor Hadrian give the Roman colony he built on the ruins of Jerusalem?
Aelia Capitolina
Aelia Capitolina joined Hadrian's family name, Aelius, to the Capitoline gods led by Jupiter, recasting the ruined Jewish capital as a pagan colony. 'Aelia' outlived Rome and was still the city's name in early Arabic.
Q 12Caliph Umar's army took Jerusalem in the 630s from which empire?
Byzantine
Byzantine: tradition says Patriarch Sophronius would surrender only to the caliph in person, and that Umar then declined to pray inside the Holy Sepulchre so the church would not be claimed as a mosque.
Q 13The Crusaders captured Jerusalem in 1099; who recaptured it for Islam in 1187?
Saladin
Q 21What is the basic shape of the Dome of the Rock's floor plan?
Octagonal
Octagonal, a layout borrowed from the Christian shrines of the region that were built around a holy spot, and its dome is almost exactly as wide as the one over the nearby Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Q 22Before glazed tiles replaced it in the 16th century, what covered the upper outer walls of the Dome of the Rock?
Glass mosaics
Glass mosaics, like those that still line the interior, once covered the upper outer walls as well. The tiles that replaced them were themselves swapped for modern copies in the 20th century, so the inside is the older face.
Q 23The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is believed to contain the site of the crucifixion, known as Calvary or what?
Golgotha
Saladin accepted a negotiated surrender and let the inhabitants buy their freedom, a pointed contrast with 1099, when the Crusaders had massacred the city's Muslims and Jews.
Q 14The walls that still ring Jerusalem's Old City were rebuilt in the 16th century under which Ottoman sultan?
Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman the Magnificent's walls ended some three centuries in which Jerusalem stood largely unwalled: its defences had been pulled down in 1219 for fear the Crusaders would retake the city and use them.
Q 15About how many square kilometres lie inside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City?
About 1
About 1 square kilometre, and until the 1860s that was the whole of Jerusalem: overcrowding inside the walls pushed the first new quarters, Mishkenot Sha'ananim among them, out onto the hills beyond.
Q 16Which of the Old City gates was added to Suleiman's wall in 1887, long after the others?
New Gate
Suleiman's builders had left the Golden Gate open at first, then bricked it up; two minor gates were reopened by archaeologists in modern times.
Q 17The Western Wall is a retaining wall of which artificially expanded hilltop?
The Temple Mount
Its lower courses of huge stones are Herodian; the whole western retaining wall runs 488 metres, far beyond the famous prayer section.
Q 18By what short Hebrew name do Jews commonly refer to the Western Wall?
The Kotel
The Kotel is short for HaKotel HaMa'aravi, simply 'the Western Wall'. 'Wailing Wall' was a name European visitors gave it for the mourning they saw there, and Jews themselves rarely use it.
Q 19What do visitors traditionally tuck into the cracks of the Western Wall?
Written prayers
Written prayers: twice a year, before Rosh Hashanah and Passover, the notes are cleared from between the stones unread and buried on the Mount of Olives, because prayers may not simply be thrown away.
Q 20The Dome of the Rock was built in 691–692 CE on the orders of which Umayyad caliph?
Abd al-Malik
Abd al-Malik's name is no longer on his own building: a 9th-century Abbasid caliph, al-Ma'mun, had it cut out of the founding inscription and his own put in, but left the original date in place.
Golgotha and Calvary both mean 'skull', one from Aramaic and one from Latin. The Gospels put the site outside the city, and it lies within the walls today only because Jerusalem later grew around it.
Q 24Which Roman emperor supported the original 4th-century construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?
Constantine
Constantine had a pagan temple raised under Hadrian pulled down to clear the site, and tradition credits his mother Helena, then visiting Jerusalem, with finding the True Cross there.
Q 25Families of which faith have for centuries held the key to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre?
Muslim
Muslim: two Jerusalem families share the duty, one keeping the key and the other opening the door, a role their own tradition explains as that of a neutral guardian among the rival Christian communities.
Q 26The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the seat of the Greek Orthodox, Latin and which other patriarchate?
Armenian
A famous 'immovable ladder' has stood beneath a facade window for centuries because no community may alter the shared status quo.
Q 27What does 'Via Dolorosa' mean in Latin?
Sorrowful Way
Sorrowful Way: late-medieval pilgrims were led along it backwards, starting at the site of the crucifixion and working back to Pilate's house, the opposite of the direction Jesus is said to have walked.
Q 28Which garden at the foot of the Mount of Olives is where the Gospels say Jesus was arrested?
Gethsemane
Gethsemane: John's Gospel says Judas knew where to bring the arresting party because Jesus had often met his disciples there.
Q 29Which valley separates the Mount of Olives from the Old City?
Kidron
Kidron: its slopes are lined with rock-cut tombs, the grandest being the so-called Tomb of Absalom, which was in fact carved roughly a thousand years after the biblical prince it is named for.
Q 30Jerusalem's Valley of Hinnom gave its name to which word for hell?
Gehenna
Gehenna is the Greek form of Ge-Hinnom, 'valley of Hinnom'. The Bible says children were burned there in sacrifice, and the name of the cursed valley became a name for the place of punishment itself.