London
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48 free London trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
London has been a major settlement for nearly 2,000 years, from the Roman trading post of Londinium to a city of more than nine million people spread across 32 boroughs and the ancient square mile of the City. It has burned down, been bombed, hosted three Olympic Games and built the world's first underground railway, and it still runs on a street plan that survived the Great Fire of 1666. These 48 questions roam the whole city: Boudica and Alfred, the plague and the fire, the Tube map and the Elizabeth line, Big Ben and Tower Bridge, the Shard and the London Eye, the Royal Parks, the museums of Albertopolis, the airports, the accents and the chocolate digestive factory in Harlesden. Easier questions cover the landmarks every visitor knows; harder ones ask which borough holds City Hall, which bank holiday hosts the Notting Hill Carnival, and which EMI engineer invented stereo sound in 1931. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo, or print it for a pub quiz.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under what name did the Romans found the settlement that became London?
Londinium
Londinium began while Camulodunum (Colchester) was Roman Britain's capital, but it had probably taken over that role by the 2nd century.
Q 02Which Iceni queen led the rebels who burned London around AD 61?
Boudica
Boudica rose against Rome after it seized her late husband's kingdom and, Tacitus says, had her flogged.
Q 03Legend says disaster will befall Britain if which birds ever leave the Tower of London?
Ravens
Ravens at the Tower are enlisted almost like soldiers, and a bird can be dismissed for bad behaviour, as several have been.
Q 04Which king took control of London from the Vikings in 886?
Alfred
Alfred then began calling himself King of the Anglo-Saxons, as the English not under Danish rule submitted to him.
Q 05Where was William the Conqueror crowned on Christmas Day 1066?
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey rang with cheers at his coronation, which Norman guards outside mistook for a riot, so they set nearby houses on fire.
Q 06London was the focus of which 1381 uprising?
The Peasants' Revolt
The Peasants' Revolt collapsed after London's mayor, William Walworth, struck down rebel leader Wat Tyler at Smithfield before the young Richard II.
Q 07During London's Great Plague of 1665, what marked the doors of infected houses?
A red cross
A red cross, with the words 'Lord have mercy upon us', meant the house was locked with a watchman outside, shutting healthy relatives in with the sick.
Q 08The Great Fire of 1666 started in a bakery on which street?
Pudding Lane
Pudding Lane's fire spread fast on a strong east wind, and it was finally checked when gunpowder was used to blast gaps between houses.
Q 09Which diarist buried his Parmesan cheese in a pit to save it from the Great Fire of London?
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys also hurried to tell Charles II that only pulling down houses could stop the fire, and the king sent him to order the Lord Mayor to do it.
Q 10Who helped design London's Monument to the Great Fire so that its central shaft could serve as a telescope?
Robert Hooke
Robert Hooke's telescope plan failed, because vibrations from traffic below made the column unsuitable for experiments.
Q 11Who designed St Paul's Cathedral, rebuilt after the Great Fire of London?
Christopher Wren
Christopher Wren also drew a grand new street plan for the burned city, but it was rejected and London was rebuilt on its medieval layout.
Q 12Which monarch was the first to make Buckingham Palace their official London residence?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria moved in soon after taking the throne and banished her mother to a remote apartment there, often refusing to see her.
Q 13What were London's 18th-century Bow Street Runners?
A police force
A police force of poorly paid constables based at Bow Street, the Runners were eventually absorbed into the Metropolitan Police.
Q 21What is the City of London's famous nickname?
The Square Mile
The Square Mile's citizens kept their rights under a 1067 charter from William the Conqueror, a rare case of the English keeping some power.
Q 22Why did London's City Hall leave its glass building beside Tower Bridge?
To save on rent
To save on rent, London's government swapped its leased riverside offices for the Crystal, a building it already owned in Newham.
Q 23What is the famously tough test that London black-cab drivers must pass called?
The Knowledge
The Knowledge leaves a mark: scans showed cabbies who passed it have a larger posterior hippocampus, and it grows with years on the job.
Q 14What caused London's 'Great Stink' in the summer of 1858?
Sewage in the Thames
Sewage in the Thames smelled so foul that it pushed Parliament into passing a law that same year, letting Joseph Bazalgette build a new network of sewers.
Q 15During London's deadly smog of December 1952, which public transport kept running?
The Underground
The Underground kept going while nearly all of London's buses were out of action, as the smog made driving at times impossible.
Q 16The Great Smog of 1952 led directly to which law?
Clean Air Act
The Clean Air Act forced town households and factories onto cleaner fuels, yet it could not prevent another severe London fog in 1962.
Q 17What nickname did London's pea-soup fogs earn the city?
The Big Smoke
The Big Smoke's worst smog, in December 1952, was blamed for at least 4,000 deaths within weeks, and later estimates run far higher.
Q 18Which 1953 disaster, which killed 307 people in England, prompted calls for the Thames Barrier?
The North Sea flood
The North Sea flood came when a severe windstorm struck at a high spring tide, piling the sea onto the coasts of England and the Netherlands.
Q 19Which body, created in 2000, restored London-wide government after 14 years without one?
Greater London Authority
The Greater London Authority filled the gap left when Margaret Thatcher's government abolished the Greater London Council, then led by Ken Livingstone.
Q 20Who was elected Mayor of London in 2016?
Sadiq Khan
Sadiq Khan went on to push the ultra-low emission zone out across the whole capital in 2023, then won a historic third term in 2024.
Q 24Road distances from London are traditionally measured from which spot?
Charing Cross
Charing Cross is where Edward I raised the grandest of the crosses marking each resting place of Queen Eleanor's funeral procession.
Q 25Which London gardens are a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
Kew Gardens
Kew Gardens lost hundreds of mature trees in a single night of storms in 1987.
Q 26Which London settlement's Royal Observatory defines the prime meridian?
Greenwich
Greenwich time became known as railway time when the railways adopted it in 1847, but it only became Britain's legal time in 1880.
Q 27What is the UK's tallest building as of 2025, at 95 storeys?
The Shard
The Shard took its name from opponents' jibe that it would be a 'shard of glass' through historic London, as English Heritage fought it at a 2003 inquiry.
Q 28Which London skyscraper's curved glass face reflected sunlight hot enough to melt parts of a parked car in 2013?
The Walkie-Talkie
The Walkie-Talkie's beam was so fierce that a reporter fried an egg in it, and the tower was nicknamed the 'Walkie-Scorchie'.
Q 29Tate Modern opened in 2000 inside which former industrial building?
Bankside Power Station
Bankside Power Station was fiercely opposed when planned, with objectors citing its dirt, grit and huge bulk directly opposite St Paul's Cathedral.
Q 30Which of London's great museums was established first, in Bloomsbury in 1753?
British Museum
The British Museum grew from physician Hans Sloane's collection of 71,000 objects, which the nation acquired after his death.