50 free Mumbai trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Mumbai was seven islands, a Portuguese outpost, a queen's dowry and a £10-a-year lease before it became India's financial capital. This quiz covers the story: the Koli goddess behind the name, the Treaty of Bassein, Catherine of Braganza, the Hornby Vellard reclamation, India's first railway in 1853, the Civil War cotton boom, the 1960 birth of Maharashtra, the 1982 mill strike, the 1995 renaming and the 2008 attacks. The city's icons follow: the Gateway of India and the last British troops, Victoria Terminus, the Art Deco ensemble, Elephanta's Shiva, the Queen's Necklace, the Sea Link, the 7.5-million-a-day locals, dabbawalas, vada pav, Dharavi, Ganesh Chaturthi and the Parsis. Then Bollywood's name and first films, the BSE, the billionaires, Wankhede's 2011 final and Mumbai's 41 Ranji titles. Easy questions ask which state Mumbai leads and what Bollywood blends; hard ones want the vada pav pioneer and the East India Company's rent. 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 India and Bollywood quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Mumbai is the capital of which Indian state?
Maharashtra
With about 12.5 million people in the city proper and 23 million in the metro region, it is India's most populous city and its financial capital.
Q 02The city's English name was officially changed from Bombay to Mumbai in which year?
1995
The Shiv Sena party had just won the state elections and argued the old name echoed colonial rule.
Q 03The name Mumbai derives from Mumbadevi, patron goddess of which native fishing community?
Koli
The 'ai' ending means 'mother' in Marathi; the Portuguese wrote 'Bombaim' after 1512.
Q 04Mumbai was built on an archipelago of how many islands?
Seven
Ptolemy called the cluster Heptanesia in 150 CE; the Hornby Vellard causeway later joined them into one.
Q 05The islands passed to England in 1661 as part of whose dowry on her marriage to Charles II?
Catherine of Braganza
The Portuguese had held them since 1535; the East India Company then leased them for £10 a year from 1668.
Q 06England leased the islands to the East India Company in 1668 for what annual rent?
£10
The population rose from 10,000 in 1661 to 60,000 in 1675, and the Company moved its headquarters from Surat in 1687.
Q 07Which engineering project, begun in 1782, merged the islands into one by reclaiming the sea between them?
The Hornby Vellard
Completed by 1784, with the wider reclamation done by 1845, it turned Bombay into a major Arabian Sea port.
Q 08India's first passenger railway, opened on 16 April 1853, ran from Bombay to which neighbouring town?
Thane
The 14-coach train took 57 minutes for the 34 km, stopping at Sion to take on water.
Q 09During which conflict did Bombay become the world's chief cotton-trading market?
The American Civil War
The 1861–65 boom was followed by the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which made the city a great Arabian Sea port.
Q 10On 1 May of which year was the present state, with Bombay as capital, created after a movement to split Bombay State?
1960
Gujarat was carved off at the same time; 105 protesters died and Flora Fountain became Hutatma Chowk, Martyrs' Square.
Q 11The Gateway of India was erected to commemorate the 1911 landing of which British monarch?
George V
He was the first British monarch to visit India; the basalt arch was finished in 1924.
Q 12The last British troops in India marched out through the Gateway of India in which year?
1948
They left with a 21-gun salute on 28 February, six months after independence.
Q 13CSMT, the city's great Indo-Gothic railway station, was officially known by what name until 1996?
Victoria Terminus
Frederick William Stevens designed it in exuberant Indo-Gothic style; it opened in 1887, Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee year, and is a UNESCO site.
Q 21Vada pav, Mumbai's most famous snack, consists of a deep-fried potato dumpling served in what?
A bread bun
Nicknamed the Bombay burger, it dates from a Dadar station stall of 1966.
Q 22Who is credited with opening the first vada pav stall, outside Dadar railway station in 1966?
Ashok Vaidya
The Shiv Sena later championed the snack at 'vada pav jamborees' for mill workers.
Q 23Dharavi in central Mumbai, home to about a million people, covers roughly how much land?
2.4 sq km
Founded in 1884, it is one of the world's densest places and hosts about 15,000 single-room factories and a big recycling industry.
Q 14Mumbai has three UNESCO World Heritage Sites: the Terminus, the Elephanta Caves and which other?
The Victorian and Art Deco Ensemble
Art Deco lines Marine Drive and the Oval Maidan, facing the Gothic Revival university and High Court.
Q 15The Elephanta Caves in Mumbai Harbour are dedicated mainly to which Hindu god?
Shiva
Their most famous carving is the three-faced Trimurti Sadashiva; the Portuguese named the island after elephant statues they found there.
Q 16Marine Drive's nickname, the Queen's Necklace, comes from what?
Its streetlights seen at night
Pallonji Mistry built the 3-km promenade in 1940 on reclaimed land; Girgaon Chowpatty lies at its northern end.
Q 17The Bandra–Worli Sea Link, opened in 2009, is a cable-stayed bridge roughly how long?
5.6 km
Officially the Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link, its eight lanes join the western suburbs to South Mumbai; the Trans Harbour Link is now longer.
Q 18Mumbai's suburban trains, the 'locals', carry roughly how many commuters a day, in millions?
7.5
Spread over 450 km, the network runs 2,342 services a day and is Asia's oldest railway system.
Q 19Mumbai's dabbawalas do what for a living?
Deliver home-cooked lunches to workers
Some 5,000 of them work by bicycle and train, a system begun by Mahadeo Havaji Bachche in 1890.
Q 20Roughly how many lunchboxes do Mumbai's dabbawalas move each day?
200,000
The famous 'one mistake in 8 million' figure was an extrapolation by a Forbes writer; the magazine never certified them as six-sigma.
Q 24Bollywood is the industry making films in which language?
Hindi
The name blends Bombay and Hollywood; it is only part of Indian cinema, and most sets are at Film City in Goregaon.
Q 25India's first feature-length film, Raja Harishchandra, was made by Dadasaheb Phalke in which year?
1913
The first Indian talkie, Alam Ara, followed in 1931, four years after The Jazz Singer.
Q 26The first Indian sound film, Alam Ara (1931), was made in which language?
Hindustani
Ardeshir Irani produced the commercially successful talkie.
Q 27Which 1975 blockbuster starring Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan typifies the Bollywood 'masala' film?
Sholay
Ramesh Sippy directed it.
Q 28The BSE, established in 1875, holds what distinction?
Oldest stock exchange in Asia
The city also houses the Reserve Bank of India, the National Stock Exchange and the securities regulator SEBI.
Q 29Mumbai generates about 6 percent of India's GDP and roughly what share of its maritime trade?
70%
Three ports handle the traffic; the city also accounts for a quarter of industrial output.
Q 30In 2024, Mumbai overtook Beijing as the Asian city with the most what?
Billionaires
The 2024 Hurun Global Rich List counted 92 billionaires in Mumbai; in 2019 it was already among the world's top ten cities by billionaire count.