Montevideo
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40 free Montevideo trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Montevideo is home to more than a third of Uruguay's people, yet it rarely gets the attention of its bigger neighbours. That is a shame, because the city has an outsized record of firsts and odd turns: a famous warship's last stand, the birth of a global football tournament, and a carnival unlike any other. This quiz turns the best Montevideo fun facts into questions. It covers how the city was founded and fought over, the landmarks along its waterfront and old town, its food and drink, its music and festivals, and the writers, athletes and architects who grew up there. It is pitched for curious travellers, students and quiz fans, with a few tougher questions for people who know Uruguay well. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish with a story to tell.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which German warship did its own captain scuttle off Montevideo in 1939 rather than fight on?
Graf Spee
Graf Spee had limped into the neutral port for repairs after a battle with three cruisers. Fooled by false reports of a waiting fleet, Captain Hans Langsdorff blew her up to spare his crew.
Q 02The Montevideo team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972, stranding survivors for 72 days, played which sport?
Rugby
Rugby union's Old Christians Club had chartered the flight from Carrasco airport. Only 16 of the 45 people aboard came home, and a museum in Montevideo's historic centre tells their story.
Q 03Which country did Uruguay beat 4–2 in Montevideo in 1930 to win the very first World Cup final?
Argentina
Argentina brought so many fans across from Buenos Aires that Montevideo's port was overwhelmed, and many never reached the stadium. The hosts sealed the win with a goal just before full time.
Q 04Which Montevideo tower, finished in 1928, was briefly Latin America's tallest building?
Palacio Salvo
Palacio Salvo was given a rooftop lighthouse that, the story goes, was meant to meet the beam of its twin tower in Buenos Aires. The two lights never met.
Q 05Montevideo's Carnival, with its drum parades and street stages, is considered the world's what?
Longest
The longest carnival in the world runs from mid-January to late February. In Montevideo that means up to 40 days of parades and open-air stages called tablados.
Q 06Punta Carretas Shopping, a Montevideo mall opened in 1994, occupies a building that began as what?
A prison
A prison from 1915 until 1986, it is best remembered for 1971, when more than 100 jailed guerrillas escaped through a tunnel dug to a nearby house.
Q 07Which world-famous tango began as a carnival march by a teenage Montevideo architecture student?
La Cumparsita
La Cumparsita was the work of 18-year-old Gerardo Matos Rodríguez, and a café bandleader reworked it into a tango. A tango museum now marks the spot where it was first played.
Q 08Which hero of Italian unification raised a legion to defend besieged Montevideo in the 1840s?
Giuseppe Garibaldi
Giuseppe Garibaldi also commanded Uruguay's fleet during the long siege. Popular history says his men first wore their famous red shirts here, bought from a Montevideo factory.
Q 09Montevideo sits on which estuary, sometimes described as the widest river in the world?
Río de la Plata
Río de la Plata widens to about 220 kilometres at its mouth, where it meets the Atlantic. Buenos Aires lies upstream to the west, on the opposite bank.
Q 10Which US state has a small city named Montevideo that swapped flags with Uruguay's capital in 1905?
Minnesota
Minnesota's Montevideo is a county seat of only a few thousand people. The friendship began when the two mayors each sent the other a national flag.
Q 11Which country's Lucien Laurent scored the first goal in World Cup history, in Montevideo in 1930?
France
France beat Mexico 4–1 that day, and Laurent's goal was a volley in the 19th minute. Another opening match kicked off across Montevideo at exactly the same time.
Q 12What is the name of Montevideo's coastal avenue, which runs unbroken for more than 22 kilometres?
The Rambla
The Rambla follows the whole shoreline, and locals use it for jogging, fishing and kite-flying. Uruguay has proposed it as a World Heritage site.
Q 13Which caffeine-rich herbal drink do Montevideo locals sip from a gourd through a metal straw?
Mate
Mate is Uruguay's national drink, and Uruguayans consume more of it per person than any other country. The metal straw doubles as a sieve to hold back the leaves.
Q 21Estadio Centenario in Montevideo was named for the 100th anniversary of which national milestone?
The first constitution
The first constitution was sworn on 18 July 1830, and the stadium opened exactly a century later to the day. Montevideo's main avenue is named for the same date.
Q 22Which Montevideo-born architect of Paris's Opéra Bastille also designed his home city's Antel tower?
Carlos Ott
Carlos Ott won the Paris commission in an international competition in 1983. His Antel tower, beside Montevideo Bay, became the tallest building in Uruguay.
Q 23Which Afro-Uruguayan drum music from Montevideo did UNESCO add to its heritage list in 2009?
Candombe
Q 14Mercado del Puerto, built as Montevideo's produce market, is famous for restaurants serving what?
Grilled meat
Grilled meat cooks over open-fire parrillas beneath an iron frame that was cast in Liverpool. The market opened to supply fruit, vegetables and meat to ships in the bay.
Q 15Which national hero's remains lie in a mausoleum beneath his statue in Montevideo's main square?
José Artigas
José Artigas died in Paraguay in 1850, and his remains were later brought home. An honour guard drawn from the corps he first served in keeps permanent watch over the urn.
Q 16Which trade bloc has its headquarters in Montevideo, inviting comparisons with Brussels?
Mercosur
Mercosur's parliament also meets in the city, in a former hotel beside Parque Rodó. A second regional bloc, ALADI, keeps its head office in Montevideo too.
Q 17Which European power's garrison did Spain expel from Montevideo in 1724 before founding the city?
Portugal
Portugal, already established at Colonia do Sacramento, had built a small fort on the bay only months earlier. Spain answered by planting a town of its own on the spot.
Q 18A popular legend says a sailor on whose 1520 voyage named Montevideo by shouting that he saw a hill?
Ferdinand Magellan
Ferdinand Magellan's crew did sight the hill in January 1520, and a boatswain's log calls it Monte Vidi. Most experts doubt the shouted phrase, and the name's origin is still disputed.
Q 19The 1933 Montevideo Convention is known in international law for setting out four criteria for what?
Statehood
Statehood, under the treaty signed in Montevideo, takes a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and the capacity to deal with other countries.
Q 20Which body declared Montevideo's Estadio Centenario a Historical Monument of World Football in 1983?
FIFA
FIFA has never given the title to another building. The stadium went up in about nine months, built by immigrant workers in time for the first World Cup.
Candombe is played on three barrel drums called chico, repique and piano. Its carnival parades are known as llamadas, or calls, after the drumbeats that once summoned people into the street.
Q 24Montevideo's Tristán Narvaja flea market fills the streets of the Cordón district on which day of the week?
Sunday
Sunday mornings bring stalls of antiques, books, pets, fruit and vegetables, running from very early until mid-afternoon. The street is named after a 19th-century lawmaker.
Q 25UNESCO added Montevideo to its Creative Cities Network in 2015 for which art form?
Literature
Literature runs deep in a city that produced Eduardo Galeano, whose Open Veins of Latin America was banned by Uruguay's military government.
Q 26Which Montevideo-born singer and doctor won a Best Original Song Oscar for The Motorcycle Diaries?
Jorge Drexler
Jorge Drexler became the first Uruguayan to win an Oscar, and it was the first time a Spanish-language song took the award. He was not allowed to perform it at the ceremony.
Q 27Which Montevideo football giant traces its origins to an 1891 cricket club for railway workers?
Peñarol
Peñarol counts the Central Uruguay Railway Cricket Club as its beginning. Its name comes from a district on the city's edge, itself named after Pinerolo, a town near Turin.
Q 28Alexandre Dumas named his 1850 book about the long siege of Montevideo after which ancient city?
Troy
Troy suited a city that held out for eight years, from 1843 to 1851, supplied by sea the whole time. Dumas called his book The New Troy.
Q 29Which stone covers the walls and columns of Montevideo's Legislative Palace, inaugurated in 1925?
Marble
Marble in many varieties, all of it from Uruguay, lines the building. Its first architect died before he could be told that his design had won the competition.
Q 30Many of Montevideo's first settler families in the 1720s arrived from which Atlantic island group?
The Canary Islands
The Canary Islands sent families to join the first six households, who had moved across from Buenos Aires. The plan of the new town named it San Felipe y Santiago de Montevideo.