Madrid Trivia
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50 free Madrid trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Madrid became Spain's capital almost by accident when Philip II parked his court there in 1561, and it has never been anywhere else for long. This quiz covers the story: the 9th-century emir's fortress, Alfonso VI's conquest, the Valladolid interlude, Charles III the 'best mayor', the Esquilache hat riots, the 2 May 1808 uprising, the 1931 constitution, Franco's Seville idea, la Movida and 23-F. The sights get their share: the bear and strawberry tree at Kilometre Zero, the Plaza Mayor's 237 balconies, the 3,418-room Royal Palace and the Christmas Eve fire that made it necessary, the Prado's opening and architect, Guernica at the Reina Sofía, the Golden Triangle, the Temple of Debod, the Retiro's fallen angel, the Cibeles post office turned city hall and the Cuatro Torres. Sport and culture round it out: the Bernabéu's finals, Atlético's Mattressers, Las Ventas, Don Quixote's printing house, Lope de Vega, Chueca and the Metro of 1919. Easy questions ask which river the city stands on and which Picasso hangs in the Reina Sofía; hard ones want the emir who founded it and the French army of 1823. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our Real Madrid and Spain quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Madrid lies on which river?
The Manzanares
The Manzanares was hemmed in by a ring road until the city buried the traffic in tunnels and opened the banks as the Madrid Río park.
Q 02Madrid stands about 650 metres above sea level, but which of these European capitals stands higher still?
Andorra la Vella
Andorra la Vella, in the Pyrenees, sits more than 1,000 metres up. Madrid's own height on the Meseta is one reason its winters turn cold and crisp.
Q 03As of 2025, Madrid is the European Union's second most populous city proper, behind which capital?
Berlin
Berlin has a few hundred thousand more residents inside its city limits. Count whole metropolitan areas instead and Paris leads, with Madrid again in second place.
Q 04Madrid began in the 9th century as a border fortress built by the emir of which Andalusian city?
Córdoba
Córdoba's emir Muhammad I raised the fort to guard the approach to Toledo, and stretches of its 9th-century wall still stand below the Almudena Cathedral.
Q 05Which king made Madrid the permanent seat of his court in June 1561?
Philip II
Philip II settled the court there without ever formally declaring Madrid the capital, yet a town of under 20,000 people grew several times over within a generation.
Q 06Between 1601 and 1606 the Spanish court left Madrid for which city?
Valladolid
Valladolid hosted the court at the urging of Philip III's favourite, the Duke of Lerma. Madrid emptied by tens of thousands of people until the king returned.
Q 07Which king, nicknamed 'the best mayor of Madrid', gave the city sewers, street lighting and the future Prado?
Charles III
Charles III had already ruled Naples for 25 years and gave up that crown to take Spain's. His statue now rides in the Puerta del Sol.
Q 08The 1766 Esquilache Riots in Madrid were provoked by a decree banning what?
Traditional hats and long cloaks
Traditional hats and long cloaks could hide a face and a weapon, the minister argued. The riots that followed drove the king out of Madrid to Aranjuez.
Q 09Which artist painted the French firing squads that answered Madrid's uprising of 2 May 1808?
Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya painted The Third of May 1808 six years after the event. The rising had begun when a crowd tried to stop the last royal children being taken to France.
Q 10Which regime's constitution first named Madrid as Spain's capital?
The Second Republic
The Second Republic fixed the capital in Madrid in Article 5 of its 1931 constitution. Five years later, with the city under attack, the same Republic moved its government to Valencia.
Q 11Which battle cry, popularised by Dolores Ibárruri, rallied Madrid's defenders against Franco's army in 1936?
¡No pasarán!
"¡No pasarán!", they shall not pass, was borrowed from the French at Verdun. Madrid held out under siege until March 1939, and the cry became an anti-fascist slogan worldwide.
Q 12The countercultural movement centred on Madrid from the late 1970s through the 1980s is known as what?
La Movida
La Movida was subsidised rather than fought by the city's socialist mayor, Enrique Tierno Galván, and its fame drew visitors such as Andy Warhol and the Ramones.
Q 13The heraldic symbol of Madrid, depicted in a statue on the Puerta del Sol, shows a bear and what?
A strawberry tree
Q 21The Reina Sofía Museum's most famous work is which 1937 Picasso painting?
Guernica
Guernica spent decades in New York because Picasso would not let it enter Spain under Franco. It arrived only in 1981, once democracy had returned.
Q 22The Prado, the Reina Sofía and which third museum make up Madrid's 'Golden Triangle of Art'?
The Thyssen-Bornemisza
The Thyssen-Bornemisza began as a baron's private collection, first lent to Spain and then bought outright in 1993 after his wife, a former Miss Spain, pressed for Madrid.
Q 23Egypt gave Madrid's Temple of Debod to Spain in 1968 in gratitude for what?
Helping save the monuments of Nubia
A strawberry tree, the madroño of the city's coat of arms. The 20-tonne bear nuzzling it went up in 1967 and became the spot where Madrileños arrange to meet.
Q 14A pavement slab in the Puerta del Sol marks what?
Kilometre Zero
Kilometre Zero is the starting point of Spain's radial roads. The slab lies outside the old Post Office, whose clock all Spain watches at midnight on New Year's Eve.
Q 15Which Madrid square, finished in 1619, has a bronze of Philip III on horseback at its centre?
Plaza Mayor
Plaza Mayor looks serene today, but it has been swept by three great fires and once staged bullfights, coronations and trials of the Inquisition.
Q 16At New Year, Spaniards eat twelve of what, one per chime of Madrid's Puerta del Sol clock?
Grapes
Grapes: the custom is recorded by the 1890s and, in the oft-told story, took off in 1909 when Alicante growers pushed it to shift a bumper harvest.
Q 17Madrid's Royal Palace is one of the largest in Europe; about how many rooms does it have?
About 3,400
About 3,400: the official count is 3,418, yet the royal family lives in none of them, keeping the palace for state ceremonies and residing at the smaller Zarzuela Palace.
Q 18Madrid's Royal Alcázar, forerunner of the Royal Palace, burned down on what date in 1734?
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve: the fire raged for four days and destroyed more than 500 paintings from the royal collection.
Q 19Which Velázquez masterpiece hangs in Madrid's Prado?
Las Meninas
Las Meninas hangs in a building designed in 1785 as a natural history museum. By the time it opened in 1819, the king had decided to hang the royal paintings there instead.
Q 20Whose lost tomb did scientists announce they had found in a Madrid convent in 2015?
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes asked to be buried with the Trinitarian nuns, whose order had helped ransom him from five years of captivity in Algiers.
Helping save the monuments of Nubia: Spain joined the UNESCO-led rescue of temples from the waters rising behind the Aswan Dam, and Debod was rebuilt in Madrid stone by stone.
Q 24Which Madrid park was royal property until 1868?
El Retiro
El Retiro was laid out in the 1630s as the grounds of Philip IV's palace. It became a public park when the revolution of 1868 drove Isabella II from the throne.
Q 25A fountain in a Madrid park is crowned by a rare public statue of which falling figure?
Lucifer
Lucifer: Ricardo Bellver's Fallen Angel was inspired by Milton's Paradise Lost, and the monument is said to stand exactly 666 metres above sea level.
Q 26Which Madrid landmark, built as the headquarters of Spain's postal service, has housed the city hall since 2007?
Cibeles Palace
Cibeles Palace opened in 1919 as a cathedral-sized head post office. The city council began moving in during 2007, and the old mail hall is now an arts centre.
Q 27Which king put his own money into the Madrid Metro's first line?
Alfonso XIII
Alfonso XIII stepped in when public fundraising fell short, then opened the line himself in 1919. One of its first stations, Chamberí, closed in 1966 and is now a museum.
Q 28As of 2025, the Madrid Metro is Europe's third-longest by route length, behind which two systems?
Moscow and London
Moscow and London have longer networks. Madrid's trains still run on the left, because the city's road traffic did the same until 1924.
Q 29Madrid's Barajas airport bears which prime minister's name?
Adolfo Suárez
Adolfo Suárez led Spain from Franco's dictatorship to democracy. He died in March 2014, and the airport took his name within days.
Q 30Real Madrid's home since 1947 bears the name of which long-serving club president?
Santiago Bernabéu
Santiago Bernabéu played for the club, coached it and then ran it as president for almost 35 years. The ground took his name in 1955, while he was still in charge.