Lima
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49 free Lima trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Lima is a desert city that almost never sees rain, a colonial capital founded by Francisco Pizarro on the feast of the Epiphany, and now one of the largest Spanish-speaking cities on Earth. It was the seat of the Viceroyalty of Peru for nearly three centuries, was looted by the Chilean army in the War of the Pacific, and in the past two decades has turned into the restaurant capital of the Americas. These 49 questions cover the whole span: the Quechua oracle whose name became Limaq, the three rivers that water the valley, the 1746 earthquake that flattened Callao, the guano boom, the pueblos jóvenes and the Shining Path years. There is plenty on today's city too: the Big Three football clubs, Miraflores and Barranco, the Magic Water Circuit, the Chifa restaurants of Barrio chino, Central and Maido topping the World's 50 Best, and the new Port of Chancay built with China. Easy questions stick to the obvious (the country, the ocean, the national dish); the hard tier asks about curacas, viceroys and which US engineer knocked down the city walls. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and carries a one-line explanation. Play it solo or print it for a South America night next to our Peru quiz.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which fictional bear's Aunt Lucy lives in the Home for Retired Bears in Lima?
Paddington
Paddington was first written as a stowaway from darkest Africa; Michael Bond switched his home to Peru after his agent pointed out that Africa has no bears.
Q 02Which body of water does Lima overlook?
The Pacific
The Pacific made Lima a capital: the Spanish chose this coastal site over Cusco, the old Inca capital high in the Andes, because ships could keep it in touch with Spain.
Q 03Which river flows through the centre of Lima?
Rímac
The Rímac pours steeply out of the high Andes and laid down the flat fan of gravel on which the Spanish built their city; it is still the chief supplier of Lima's drinking water.
Q 04Which conquistador founded Lima in 1535?
Francisco Pizarro
Francisco Pizarro died in the city he founded: in 1541 followers of a rival conquistador's son stormed his palace and killed him, and his tomb lies in Lima Cathedral.
Q 05Under what name was Lima founded?
City of the Kings
City of the Kings honoured the three Magi, because the Spanish founded it in January 1535, close to the feast of the Epiphany; their three crowns still sit on Lima's coat of arms.
Q 06Lima's name likely comes from a Quechua oracle's name meaning what?
Talker
Talker, or speaker: Spanish tongues turned the Quechua word into Lima, and the native name soon pushed aside the grander title the conquistadors had given their capital.
Q 07Which seaside city holds Lima's seaport and main airport?
Callao
Callao was where Inca gold and silver were loaded onto ships for Spain, which made the port a magnet for raiders; Francis Drake was among those who attacked it.
Q 08Lima's international airport is named after which person?
Jorge Chávez
Jorge Chávez was a Peruvian aviator who in 1910 became the first to fly across the Alps, then crashed as he came in to land in Italy and died of his injuries at 23.
Q 09Lima is the second most populous city in South America, behind which other?
São Paulo
São Paulo is the only South American city with more residents within its limits; Lima owes its own size to migration from the Andes, which multiplied its population several times over after 1940.
Q 10Lima syndrome, in which captors come to sympathise with their hostages, mirrors the syndrome named after which city?
Stockholm
Stockholm gave its name in 1973, when bank staff held hostage for six days ended up siding with the robbers and tried to shield them from the police.
Q 11What do people in Lima call the fine sea-mist drizzle of the city's winters?
Garúa
Garúa is nearly all the precipitation Lima gets: the mist condenses rather than falls as rain, yet it is enough to turn bare coastal hills green each winter.
Q 12Which president of Peru ordered the 1997 commando raid that ended Lima's four-month embassy hostage crisis?
Alberto Fujimori
Alberto Fujimori's commandos tunnelled under the ambassador's residence and stormed it after 126 days, saving all but one of the 72 hostages; he was later jailed for crimes in office.
Q 13Which cold current helps keep rainfall in Lima so low?
Humboldt
The Humboldt Current chills the sea air so that it yields fog rather than rain, which helps make the coast around Lima one of the driest places on Earth.
Q 21Which Maoist insurgent group brought years of bombings and assassinations to Lima from the 1980s?
Shining Path
Shining Path began in the remote Andes and carried its war to the capital, where its leader, Abimael Guzmán, was finally caught in 1992, hiding in a house that doubled as a ballet studio.
Q 22Which Lima-born photographer took the 1997 Vanity Fair portraits of Diana, Princess of Wales?
Mario Testino
Mario Testino studied law and economics in Lima, then moved to London in 1976 and waited tables at night while he built a portfolio; the Diana shoot made him famous far beyond fashion.
Q 23Which novel follows five travellers killed on the road between Lima and Cusco?
Q 14Which general's arrival in 1821 led Lima to sign a Declaration of Independence?
José de San Martín
José de San Martín had already led an army across the Andes when he became Protector of Peru; he abruptly resigned in 1822 after a private meeting with Bolívar and left the country.
Q 15Which 1824 battle decided Peru's War of Independence?
Ayacucho
Ayacucho saw an outnumbered patriot army rout the royalists and take the Spanish viceroy prisoner; his surrender secured independence for Peru and the young republics around it.
Q 16Export income from which commodity funded Lima's expansion in the 1850s?
Guano
Guano is seabird droppings, dug from islands off the coast and shipped to Europe as fertiliser; the windfall let the state replace Lima's old viceregal buildings with new public ones.
Q 17Which cocktail is credited to Victor Morris, an American who opened a bar in Lima in 1916?
Pisco sour
Pisco sour was Morris's take on the whiskey sour, made with the local grape brandy; Peru now honours the drink with a day of its own, on the first Saturday of every February.
Q 18Which neighbouring country's army occupied Lima from 1881 to 1883?
Chile
Chile's troops held Lima for almost three years and stripped the National Library of its books; in 2007, more than a century later, Chile sent nearly 4,000 of them back.
Q 19Which 1746 disaster flattened much of Lima and sent a wave that wiped out its port?
An earthquake
An earthquake struck on the night of 28 October 1746 and left most of Lima in ruins; the wave that followed swept away the port, which was rebuilt on a new site and given a vast fortress.
Q 20What are Lima's self-built shanty settlements called?
Pueblos jóvenes
Pueblos jóvenes means young towns, the name squatter camps took as they became permanent; cardboard and matting gave way to brick, and the state ended up granting land titles.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
The Bridge of San Luis Rey won Thornton Wilder a Pulitzer in 1928; in it a friar who sees the rope bridge fall digs into the five lives to learn whether they ended by chance or by design.
Q 24Which pre-Inca pilgrimage sanctuary stands just south-east of Lima?
Pachacámac
Pachacámac drew pilgrims for more than a thousand years, into Inca times; within months of capturing the Inca ruler Atahualpa, the Spanish sent horsemen to seize its temple gold.
Q 25What is the Peruvian term for the ancient adobe pyramids scattered across Lima?
Huacas
Huacas were sacred things to Andean peoples, from shrines to mountains and waterfalls; an early Spanish chronicler, seeing the dead laid in them, took the word to mean a burial place.
Q 26Which carved-wood feature of Lima's colonial mansions marks its UNESCO-listed Historic Centre?
Balconies
Balconies of the closed box type were singled out by UNESCO when it described the old centre, and in the 1990s a mayor launched an Adopt a Balcony campaign to get them restored.
Q 27Which October procession is Lima's biggest religious event?
Lord of Miracles
Lord of Miracles is a mural of Christ painted in the 1600s by an enslaved man from Angola; each October vast crowds dressed in purple follow a copy of it through the streets of Lima.
Q 28Which saint, born in Lima in 1586, was the first person from the Americas to be canonised?
Rose
Rose of Lima cut off her hair and blistered her face with hot peppers to put off suitors; canonised in 1671, she became a patron saint of Peru and of the Philippines.
Q 29Lima's Plaza de Acho is the oldest what in the Americas?
Bullring
Bullring: Acho opened in 1766 after a Lima grandee sought leave to build a fixed arena for the bullfights held at Carnival, and it is still in use more than 250 years on.
Q 30Peru were playing which country in Lima in 1964 when a riot led to football's deadliest stadium disaster?
Argentina
Argentina led 1-0 in an Olympic qualifier when a late Peru equaliser was ruled out; fans ran on, police fired tear gas into the stands, and 328 people died in the crush at closed exit gates.