Moscow Trivia
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58 free Moscow trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Moscow was a minor border town in 1147, a burned ruin in 1571 and 1812, and the capital of two empires. This quiz covers that arc: the first tsar, Peter the Great taking the capital away and Lenin bringing it back, Napoleon's fire, the 1941 defence, the boycotted 1980 Olympics and the 2018 World Cup final. Most of the questions are about the places visitors actually see. Inside the Kremlin: Italian-built walls, four cathedrals and the red stars that replaced the eagles. On Red Square: why 'red' meant beautiful, Saint Basil's nine domes and the blinded-architect legend, Lenin's Mausoleum and GUM. Beyond: the Bolshoi and Swan Lake, the Metro's chandeliers and Europe's longest escalators, the Ostankino Tower, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour that became a swimming pool, the Seven Sisters, Gorky Park and Elk Island. Easy questions ask which river the city stands on and what a Muscovite is; hard ones want the length of Red Square, the meaning of Losiny Ostrov and the pre-Soviet name of GUM. 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 Russia and Saint Petersburg quizzes next.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Moscow stands on the banks of which river?
The Moskva
The Moskva joins the Oka, which in turn feeds the Volga, so water from Moscow's river does reach Russia's most famous one, far downstream.
Q 02Which prince hosted an ally at Moscow in 1147, the city's first recorded mention?
Yuri Dolgorukiy
Yuri Dolgorukiy's meeting is simply the first time Moscow is named, yet 1147 became the city's traditional founding date and Yuri its founder.
Q 03What is a resident of Moscow called in English?
Muscovite
Muscovite comes from Muscovy, the old Western name for the Moscow state; the mica called muscovite was 'Muscovy glass', once used there for window panes.
Q 04In Moscow in 1547, the 16-year-old Ivan the Terrible became the first Russian ruler crowned with which title?
Tsar
Tsar is the Slavic form of Caesar, the Roman emperors' title; until then, Moscow's rulers had been crowned only as grand princes.
Q 05Which ruler moved the Russian capital away from Moscow to a newly built city on the Baltic in 1712?
Peter the Great
Peter the Great made St Petersburg his capital while Sweden still claimed the ground it stood on; the war for that coast did not end until 1721.
Q 06Whose government moved Russia's capital back to Moscow in March 1918?
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin's government left Petrograd as German forces threatened the city; the Germans were gone within the year, but the capital stayed in Moscow.
Q 07What is thought to have started Moscow's great fire during Napoleon's occupation?
Russian sabotage
Russian sabotage: arsonists were caught setting fires, and the spreading flames soon drove Napoleon out of the Kremlin to a palace outside the city.
Q 08Which novel, set in 1930s Moscow, has the Devil visit the city as the magician Professor Woland?
The Master and Margarita
The Master and Margarita: Bulgakov burned draft pages of the novel at his Moscow flat, just as his hero the Master burns his own manuscript.
Q 09The US led a boycott of Moscow's Summer Olympics over the Soviet invasion of which country?
Afghanistan
Afghanistan: not one athlete was caught doping at the Moscow Games, yet former KGB officers allege the agency undermined the tests.
Q 10Which Moscow stadium, the largest in the city, hosted the 2018 FIFA World Cup final?
Luzhniki
Luzhniki was demolished and rebuilt for the tournament, but its 1956 facade wall was kept for its architectural value.
Q 11Which Moscow club became the first Russian football team to win a UEFA competition, lifting the UEFA Cup?
CSKA
CSKA came from a goal down to beat Sporting 3–1 in the 2005 final, played at Sporting's own home ground in Lisbon.
Q 12Which Western fast-food chain opened its first Soviet restaurant on Moscow's Pushkin Square in 1990?
McDonald's
McDonald's left Russia in 2022, and the Pushkin Square branch reopened under a new Russian owner as Vkusno i tochka, 'Tasty, and that's it'.
Q 13Moscow Metro announcers are male inbound and female outbound to help whom?
Sight-impaired riders
Sight-impaired riders can tell a train's direction by ear; passengers remember the rule as the boss calling you in to work and the wife calling you home.
Q 21Moscow's old title 'the Third Rome' cast which fallen city as the second?
Constantinople
Constantinople fell to the Ottomans in 1453, and a monk from Pskov later wrote that Moscow had inherited its place as the last seat of true Christian empire.
Q 22Which Kremlin landmark cracked in 1737's fire?
Tsar Bell
The Tsar Bell cracked when fire swept the Kremlin in 1737, soon after it was cast, and the biggest bell in the world has never once been rung.
Q 23After the Revolution, the golden eagles on the Kremlin towers were replaced by what?
Illuminated red stars
Illuminated red stars replaced the tsarist eagles in 1935-37; made of ruby glass and mounted on bearings, each one swings round to face the wind.
Q 14When Moscow's Park Pobedy station opened in 2003, it had Europe's longest what?
Escalators
Escalators: each runs 126 metres with 740 steps, so the ride up to the street takes about three minutes.
Q 15The bronze statue 'Compassion' at Moscow's Mendeleyevskaya metro station honours which animal?
A stray dog
A stray dog named Malchik lived at the station until a woman stabbed him in 2001; the public outrage that followed brought in donations for the statue.
Q 16Which American pianist won Moscow's first International Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958, at the height of the Cold War?
Van Cliburn
Van Cliburn, a 23-year-old Texan, came home from Moscow to a ticker-tape parade on Broadway.
Q 17Which was Moscow's main international airport, expanded with a new terminal for the Olympic Games?
Sheremetyevo
Sheremetyevo was built as a military airbase for the Soviet air force; it only switched to civilian flights in 1959.
Q 18During the August 1991 coup attempt, which leader climbed onto a tank outside Moscow's parliament to rally the crowd?
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin climbed onto a tank and urged the troops not to turn on the people; the coup collapsed within three days, and by December the Soviet Union was gone.
Q 19The word 'kremlin' means what in Russian?
A fortress within a city
A fortress within a city: many old Russian towns have one, but Moscow's grew so famous that 'the Kremlin' became shorthand for the Russian government itself.
Q 20Masters from which country built the Kremlin's present brick walls and towers in 1485–95?
Italy
Italy had already supplied Aristotele Fioravanti, who rebuilt the Kremlin's main cathedral after the local builders' attempt collapsed; Ivan III then hired Italian fortress engineers for the walls.
Q 24The word 'krasnaya' in Red Square's Russian name originally meant what?
Beautiful
Beautiful: 'krasnaya' meant that before it meant red, and the square had the name by the mid-1600s, so it has nothing to do with communism.
Q 25In 1987, teenager Mathias Rust landed what beside Red Square?
Light aircraft
A light aircraft: Rust flew a rented Cessna from Helsinki, and Gorbachev used the embarrassment to force out his defence minister within days.
Q 26Ivan the Terrible built Saint Basil's Cathedral to commemorate the capture of which two cities?
Kazan and Astrakhan
Kazan and Astrakhan were Tatar khanates on the Volga; taking them in 1552 and 1556 put the whole river under Moscow's control.
Q 27Who was the Basil of Saint Basil's Cathedral?
Holy fool
A holy fool: Basil wandered Moscow's streets and openly rebuked Ivan the Terrible, yet Ivan carried his coffin and he was buried where the cathedral stands.
Q 28By legend, what did Ivan the Terrible do to Saint Basil's architect so it could never be repeated?
Had him blinded
Had him blinded, the legend says, but most historians call it a myth: the same builder is recorded on major projects after the cathedral was finished.
Q 29Which saint is shown on horseback on Moscow's coat of arms?
Saint George
Saint George spears a dragon on the city's arms, and the same horseman sits on the breast of the double-headed eagle in Russia's national emblem.
Q 30As German forces closed on Moscow in 1941, where was Lenin's embalmed body sent for safety?
Siberia
Siberia: the body sat out the war in the town of Tyumen, tended by its embalmers, and returned to Red Square once the danger had passed.