This Netherlands trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and goes well beyond tulips and windmills. It starts with the land itself - the twelve provinces, the polders and dikes, the Afsluitdijk and the Delta Works built after the 1953 flood, an airport that sits entirely below sea level - and then works through the history that made the country: William the Silent and the Eighty Years' War, the VOC and tulip mania, the Rampjaar, New Amsterdam, Anne Frank, the Hunger Winter and Arnhem. From there it turns to Dutch life: King's Day, Sinterklaas arriving by steamboat, stroopwafels and the Alkmaar cheese market, Kinderdijk's windmills and Keukenhof's tulips. Art gets its due with Rembrandt, Vermeer, Van Gogh and Mondrian, sport with Cruyff, Euro 1988, speed skating, Fanny Blankers-Koen and Max Verstappen, and there are questions on the monarchy, Prinsjesdag, the world's first same-sex marriage law and Dutch science from Leeuwenhoek's microscopes to the pendulum clock and Wi-Fi. About a third of the questions are easy enough for anyone who has visited Amsterdam; the rest climb toward the detail only a true Nederland fan would know. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and the primary sources it cites, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many provinces make up the Netherlands?
Twelve
Beyond the European provinces, three Caribbean islands (Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba) are 'special municipalities' that belong to no province at all.
Q 02Which non-capital city is the seat of the Dutch government, parliament and Supreme Court?
The Hague
Its formal Dutch name, 's-Gravenhage, means 'the count's enclosure', a nod to the hunting grounds of the medieval Counts of Holland.
Q 03Roughly what share of the Netherlands' land area lies below sea level?
26%
Even so, the country's highest point is not in Europe at all: Mount Scenery on the Caribbean island of Saba rises 870 metres.
Q 04At about 322 metres, what is the highest point of the European Netherlands?
Vaalserberg
It sits at the Drielandenpunt, where the Dutch, Belgian and German borders meet, so you can stand in three countries in a few strides.
Q 05Which Netherlands province, established in 1986, was reclaimed from the former Zuiderzee?
Flevoland
Its capital, Lelystad, is named after Cornelis Lely, the engineer who designed the reclamation scheme; the province's eastern and southern polders form the world's largest artificial island.
Q 06When the 32 km Afsluitdijk sealed off the Zuiderzee in 1932, the salt inlet became which freshwater lake?
IJsselmeer
The dam runs from Den Oever to the village of Zurich, a name that has confused more than one traveller expecting Switzerland.
Q 07The Delta Works, a vast system of dams and storm-surge barriers, were commissioned in response to which disaster?
The 1953 North Sea flood
The flood struck on the night of 31 January 1953 and killed 1,836 people in the Netherlands, most of them in the south-west; the last major barrier was not finished until 1997.
Q 08The lowest point in the Netherlands, about 7 metres below sea level, lies in which polder?
Zuidplaspolder
It is near Nieuwerkerk aan den IJssel, just outside Rotterdam; the Beemster, by contrast, is a 17th-century polder on the UNESCO list.
Q 09The Netherlands sits at the mouths of the Rhine, the Maas and which third major European river?
Scheldt
The three rivers built the delta that makes up much of the country, and their reclaimed polders account for about half of its surface area.
Q 10What is unusual about the site of Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, the Dutch hub airport?
It lies entirely below sea level
Its lowest point is 3.4 metres below sea level, on the bed of the Haarlemmermeer, a lake drained in the 1850s.
Q 11Dutch cartographers named Tasman's discovery 'Nova Zeelandia' after which province?
Zeeland
Tasman himself had called the islands Staten Land, wrongly assuming they joined a landmass off South America.
Q 12What does the name 'Netherlands' literally mean?
Lower countries
The Dutch endonym Nederland says the same thing, and the country's flat, low-lying terrain is why so much of it needs dikes.
Q 13Which city's centre was destroyed by Luftwaffe bombing on 14 May 1940, prompting Dutch surrender?
Rotterdam
Rebuilt with modern architecture, it is now home to Europe's busiest port and the Erasmus University, named after the humanist born there.
Q 21Anne Frank died in which concentration camp?
Bergen-Belsen
She was born in Frankfurt in 1929; her diary was first published in Dutch in 1947 as 'Het Achterhuis', and her father Otto was the family's only survivor.
Q 22What is the Dutch famine of 1944–45, caused by a German food embargo, known as?
Hunger Winter
Around 20,000 people died and city dwellers ate soup made from sugar beets and tulip bulbs; in the final days Allied bombers dropped 7.8 million kilograms of food in Operation Manna.
Q 23Operation Market Garden failed to capture the Rhine bridge in which Dutch city?
Arnhem
The plan expected Allied armour to cover 100 km from the Belgian border in 48 hours; Cornelius Ryan's account gave the battle its lasting label, 'A Bridge Too Far'.
Q 14Batavia, the Asian headquarters of the Dutch East India Company (VOC), is today which city?
Jakarta
The VOC, chartered in 1602, was the first company whose shares were freely traded by the public; it went bankrupt and was dissolved in 1799.
Q 15William the Silent, leader of the Dutch Revolt, was shot dead by Balthasar Gérard in 1584 in which city?
Delft
He is regarded as the founding father of the nation, and the royal family is still buried in the city's Nieuwe Kerk today.
Q 16The first letters of the 15 stanzas of the Dutch national anthem, the 'Wilhelmus', spell out what?
Willem van Nassov
The song is written as a first-person monologue by William of Nassau himself, and dates to at least 1572, making it the oldest national anthem still in use.
Q 17Though it dates from the 1570s, when did the 'Wilhelmus' officially become the Dutch anthem?
1932
It replaced 'Wien Neêrlands Bloed' on 10 May 1932, the same month the Afsluitdijk was finally closed.
Q 18The Eighty Years' War, ended by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, won Dutch independence from which crown?
Spain
The war had begun in 1568; the treaty finally gave the Dutch Republic formal recognition after decades of de facto independence.
Q 19In which year did the tulip-bulb speculation known as 'tulip mania' dramatically collapse?
1637
At its peak a single Semper Augustus bulb sold for 10,000 guilders; it is usually described as the first recorded speculative bubble in history.
Q 20Dutch historians call 1672, the year of four invasions, the 'Rampjaar'. What does it mean?
Disaster Year
The Dutch saved Holland by opening the Water Line and deliberately flooding their own land; the year is generally taken as the end of the Golden Age.
Q 24Which American metropolis began life in the 1620s as the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam?
New York
The English seized it in 1664 and renamed it after the Duke of York; Harlem and Brooklyn still carry the names of Dutch towns.
Q 25Signed in 1992, the treaty that created the European Union takes its name from which Dutch city?
Maastricht
It came into force on 1 November 1993 and set the timetable for the single currency; the Netherlands adopted the euro in 2002.
Q 26King's Day (Koningsdag), the national holiday marking the monarch's birthday, falls on which date?
27 April
Until 2013 it was Queen's Day on 30 April; it is also the one day the government allows street selling without a permit or VAT, hence the nationwide vrijmarkt flea market.
Q 27How does Sinterklaas traditionally arrive in the Netherlands each November?
By steamboat
He is said to sail up from the south, then ride a white horse across the rooftops; gifts are exchanged on 5 December, and he is the direct ancestor of Santa Claus.
Q 28The stroopwafel, two thin waffles glued with caramel syrup, was first made in which South Holland city?
Gouda
One story credits baker Gerard Kamphuisen, who opened his shop there in 1810; the oldest known recipe dates from 1840.
Q 29Which North Holland city holds a famous Friday cheese market where deals end with a hand clap?
Alkmaar
The city is also remembered for surviving a Spanish siege in 1573, giving rise to the saying 'Bij Alkmaar begint de victorie'.
Q 30How many windmills stand at Kinderdijk, the UNESCO-listed group built around 1740?
19
It is the largest concentration of old windmills in the country and has been on the World Heritage list since 1997.