Moldova Trivia
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49 free Moldova trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Forty-four questions on Moldova, the small landlocked country between Romania and Ukraine that most people know for wine, a breakaway republic and one Eurovision saxophonist. Geography covers Chisinau, the Prut and Dniester rivers, the 430-metre 'summit', the half-kilometre of Danube frontage that gives it a port, Transnistria and Tiraspol, and Turkic-speaking Gagauzia. History runs from the drowned hound Molda who supposedly named the river, through Stephen the Great and the Principality of Moldavia, the 1812 Russian annexation as Bessarabia, union with Romania in 1918, the Moldavian SSR, 1991 independence, the 1992 Transnistria war and the EU candidacy under Maia Sandu. Culture and economy cover the Milestii Mici and Cricova cellars, the leu, martisor, mamaliga and placinte, O-Zone's 'Dragostea Din Tei', Epic Sax Guy, and Sheriff Tiraspol beating Real Madrid at the Bernabeu. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the country, its regions, rulers and cities, and the sentence that establishes it is quoted under each explanation. Suits a pub quiz, a European geography class or a wine-tour warm-up.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Moldova is bordered by Ukraine and which other country?
Romania
Romania is Moldova's only neighbour besides Ukraine, and it governed most of today's Moldova between the world wars until a Soviet ultimatum in June 1940 forced it to hand the land over.
Q 02What is the capital and largest city of Moldova?
Chisinau
Chisinau was so badly damaged in the Second World War that much of today's city centre dates from the Soviet rebuilding that followed.
Q 03The unrecognised breakaway state along Moldova's eastern edge is called what?
Transnistria
Transnistria calls itself the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, yet no United Nations member recognises it, even though about 1,500 Russian troops were still stationed there in 2023.
Q 04Which city is the capital of Moldova's breakaway east-bank region?
Tiraspol
Tiraspol grew up beside a fortress the Russian army built in 1792 to guard its new frontier, and until 1940 it was the capital of a Soviet Moldavian republic set up inside Ukraine.
Q 05Moldova's autonomous region of Gagauzia is home to a people whose mother tongue belongs to which family?
Turkic
Unusually for Turkic speakers, the Gagauz are mostly Orthodox Christians, and they live mainly in southern Moldova.
Q 06According to legend, the Moldova River, and thus the country, is named after Molda, which kind of animal?
A hunting dog
A hunting dog called Molda died at the river during Prince Dragos's long chase, in the legend Moldavia's old chroniclers recorded, so the prince gave the water her name.
Q 07The eastern half of the Principality of Moldavia, annexed by Russia in 1812, became known by what name?
Bessarabia
Bessarabia at first meant only a southern strip; after Russia took the land in the 1812 Treaty of Bucharest, the name was stretched over the whole province.
Q 08Which 15th-century ruler of Moldavia, famous for churches and monasteries, reigned from 1457 until 1504?
Stephen the Great
Stephen the Great took the throne with help from Vlad the Impaler, then beat an Ottoman army at Vaslui in 1475, a victory that led Pope Sixtus IV to hail him as a champion of Christ.
Q 09Which pact's secret protocol let the Soviet Union annex today's Moldova in 1940?
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 placed the region in the Soviet sphere, so a June 1940 ultimatum undid the union with its western neighbour that a local assembly had voted for in 1918.
Q 10Moldova declared independence days after a failed 1991 coup against which Soviet leader?
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev survived the coup, but his union did not: Moldova declared independence on 27 August, within a week of the plot's collapse, and the Soviet Union was dissolved that December.
Q 11Who became the first woman elected president of Moldova, in November 2020?
Maia Sandu
Maia Sandu won a second term in 2024 with 55 percent of the run-off, a result tipped by Moldovans voting abroad after her rival led the count inside the country.
Q 12Moldova was granted candidate status for membership of which organisation in June 2022?
The European Union
The European Union said yes less than four months after Moldova applied, an application signed in March 2022, days after Russia's full invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.
Q 13A March 2023 law formally renamed Moldova's only official language as what?
Romanian
Q 21Moldova's 2010 Eurovision entry spawned which internet meme, thanks to Sergey Stepanov's dance moves?
Epic Sax Guy
Epic Sax Guy outlived the song: 'Run Away' finished only 22nd in 2010, but when the same band returned to the contest in 2017 it took third place.
Q 22Which club became the first from Moldova to reach the Champions League group stage, then won at Real Madrid?
Sheriff Tiraspol
Sheriff Tiraspol won 2-1 at the Bernabeu in September 2021 when Luxembourg midfielder Sebastien Thill struck a late half-volley, yet Real Madrid still went on to lift the trophy that season.
Q 23Moldovans mark the start of spring by exchanging which red-and-white good-luck talisman?
Martisor
Romanian was the name used in the 1991 Declaration of Independence, and after a 2013 Constitutional Court judgment on that text the 2023 law replaced 'Moldovan' throughout the statute book.
Q 14A land swap gave landlocked Moldova a short strip of which river's bank, opening a route to the sea?
The Danube
The Danube strip at Giurgiulesti came from Ukraine partly in exchange for a stretch of contested road, and the port later built on it can take seagoing ships.
Q 15Moldova lies just east of which mountain range?
The Carpathians
The Carpathians curve past to the west, so Moldova itself is a hilly plain cut by river valleys and ravines, and its summit, Balanesti Hill, stands in the central Codri uplands.
Q 16Which Moldovan winery holds the Guinness record for the world's largest wine cellar by number of bottles?
Milestii Mici
Milestii Mici keeps more than 1.5 million bottles in galleries first dug as a limestone mine, and Guinness World Records recognised the hoard in 2005.
Q 17In 2006 Russia, then buying about 80 percent of Moldova's exported wine, banned it along with wine from which other country?
Georgia
Georgia was caught by the same ban, which Russian inspectors blamed on pesticide traces while both countries defended their wine and observers called the row political.
Q 18Moldova's currency, the leu, takes its name from a word meaning what?
Lion
Lion is what leu literally means: Dutch coins stamped with a lion circulated in the region in the 17th century, and the animal's name stuck as a word for money.
Q 19Which animal's head appears on the shield borne by the eagle on Moldova's flag and coat of arms?
An aurochs
An aurochs, a wild ox now extinct, lives on in the arms because its head was the emblem of the medieval Principality of Moldavia.
Q 20Which Moldovan band's 2003 hit 'Dragostea Din Tei' topped charts across Europe?
O-Zone
O-Zone's song found a second life in December 2004, when an American vlogger lip-synced to it at his computer and the 'Numa Numa' video became one of the first viral internet memes.
Martisor threads are often worn until the first blossoming tree, swallow or stork of the year is seen, and only then untied.
Q 24Mamaliga, a Moldovan staple, is a porridge made from what?
Yellow maize flour
Yellow maize flour makes a mamaliga thick enough to stand in for bread, which is why it is traditionally turned out of the pot and sliced with a piece of string.
Q 25Which Russian writer, banished from St Petersburg under the tsar, spent three years in what is now Moldova?
Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Pushkin was sent south in 1820 for his political poems, and during his exile there he wrote The Prisoner of the Caucasus.
Q 26Which party won 71 of the 101 seats in Moldova's parliament in 2001?
Communists
The Communists were back in power a decade after Moldova left the Soviet Union, yet by its 2005 re-election the party had signalled a shift away from Russia.
Q 27Which fertile soil, the kind that made neighbouring Ukraine a breadbasket, covers Moldova's Balti steppe?
Chernozem
Chernozem is Russian for 'black earth', and the Balti steppe's deep layers of it are on UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list as a long-running record of how farming changes the soil.
Q 28Before a 1989 law changed the script, Moldovans wrote their own language in which alphabet?
Cyrillic
Cyrillic was the rule under both the tsars and the Soviets, whose scholars insisted for political reasons that Moldovan was a separate language of its own.
Q 29Which antelope, said by Strabo to drink through its nose, once roamed Moldova's steppe but is now extinct there?
The saiga
The saiga's swollen snout is thought to warm and moisten the air it breathes; hunting and habitat loss drove it from the western end of its range.
Q 30The 1903 Easter riot that killed dozens of Jews in Russian-ruled Moldova is known as what?
The Kishinev pogrom
The Kishinev pogrom drew world attention to the persecution of Russia's Jews, and the Hebrew poet Bialik, sent to interview survivors, wrote 'In the City of Slaughter' about it.