Paris
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This Paris trivia quiz has 49 free questions with answers and covers the city from Roman Lutetia to the 2024 Olympics: the Eiffel Tower and why it was never torn down, the Louvre and the theft of the Mona Lisa, Notre-Dame's fire and reopening, Haussmann's boulevards, the Commune, the Liberation, the Métro's Art Nouveau entrances, the six million skeletons under the streets, and the croissants and baguettes that keep the city fed. The first questions are easy enough for anyone who has walked the Champs-Élysées once; the last ones will stretch people who have lived there. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer, so it works as a solo challenge or a ready-made round for a trivia night. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Paris's biggest airport, at Roissy, is named after which French leader?
Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle never saw it: he died in 1970, four years before the airport that bears his name opened.
Q 02In what pattern are Paris's 20 arrondissements numbered?
A spiral from the centre
A spiral from the centre starts with the 1st arrondissement, home to the official buildings, and each number ends that district's postcode, 75001 to 75020.
Q 03Paris's nickname 'City of Light' is partly a nod to its role in which era?
The Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment is one reason given, though some credit the street lanterns Paris's first police chief put up from 1667.
Q 04What was the Roman name for the town that became Paris?
Lutetia
Lutetia was home to the Parisii, a Gallic tribe, and it is from them that the city later took the name Paris.
Q 05Which Frankish king, baptised at Reims, made Paris his capital from 508?
Clovis
Clovis united the Franks under one king, yet after his death his four sons split his kingdom between them.
Q 06The Eiffel Tower was built for celebrations marking the centenary of what?
The French Revolution
The French Revolution's centenary gave Paris a tower that leading artists publicly condemned as useless and monstrous, yet it became the city's symbol.
Q 07Which New York skyscraper ended the Eiffel Tower's 41-year reign as the world's tallest structure?
Chrysler Building
The Chrysler Building's spire was secretly assembled inside the tower and hoisted into place in about 90 minutes to beat a rival skyscraper.
Q 08What saved the Eiffel Tower when its 20-year permit ran out in 1909?
Its value for radio telegraphy
Its value for radio telegraphy made it too useful to pull down, and from 1910 it beamed time signals that ships used to fix their position.
Q 09Tailor Franz Reichelt died jumping from the Eiffel Tower in 1912 while testing what?
A parachute suit
A parachute suit was only meant to be tested on a dummy, but Reichelt jumped himself, and his fall was caught on film.
Q 10When the Louvre opened as a public museum in 1793, where had most of its paintings come from?
The monarchy and the Church
The monarchy and the Church supplied most of it; Napoleon's armies later filled the museum with loot, but after his fall many works went back to their owners.
Q 11Which French king converted the medieval Louvre fortress into the primary royal residence in 1546?
Francis I
Francis I rebuilt the fortress as a Renaissance palace, but once Louis XIV chose Versailles, the Louvre was left to house the royal art collection.
Q 12Who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911?
Vincenzo Peruggia
Vincenzo Peruggia kept the painting hidden in his Paris room for two years, and the publicity around the theft turned it into a world-famous icon.
Q 13What does the bronze medallion set in the square in front of Notre-Dame mark?
Point zero for road distances
Q 21Who designed the Paris Métro's famous Art Nouveau station entrances?
Hector Guimard
Hector Guimard's entrances were mocked at first, and in 1904 the Opéra station turned his design down in favour of a classical one.
Q 22Why were millions of Parisians' bones moved into old quarries beneath the city from the 1780s?
Cemeteries were overflowing
Cemeteries were overflowing: Holy Innocents' ground stood two metres above the street and a cellar wall beside it gave way; over six million people now lie below.
Q 23To lure Parisians to the new Père Lachaise cemetery, officials moved in the remains of which playwright?
Molière
Point zero for road distances lies on a square where digs for a planned underground car park in the 1960s uncovered ruins that are now kept in a crypt below.
Q 14Notre-Dame stands on which island in the Seine?
Île de la Cité
Île de la Cité was the kings' seat until the 14th century, and its old palace prison, the Conciergerie, later held Marie Antoinette before her execution.
Q 15What is the name of the bell-ringer in the 1831 novel that stirred support for restoring Notre-Dame?
Quasimodo
Quasimodo's story drew such public interest that the neglected cathedral was restored under architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.
Q 16Which relic, rescued from Notre-Dame's 2019 fire, returned to the cathedral days after its December 2024 reopening?
The Crown of Thorns
The Crown of Thorns was carried to safety by Paris firefighters, among them their chaplain, Father Jean-Marc Fournier, who went into the burning cathedral.
Q 17Napoleon commissioned the Arc de Triomphe in 1806 after which victory?
Austerlitz
Austerlitz inspired the arch, but it took three decades to build and was only finished in 1836, long after Napoleon's fall.
Q 18In August 1919 pilot Charles Godefroy did what at the Arc de Triomphe?
Flew a biplane through it
Flew a biplane through it: Charles Godefroy did it in protest after airmen were ordered to march on foot in the victory parade.
Q 19What was the old name of the square where twelve avenues meet around the Arc de Triomphe?
Place de l'Étoile
Place de l'Étoile, 'Star Square', took its name from the twelve avenues that radiate from it like the points of a star.
Q 20The first Paris Métro line opened in July 1900 during which event?
The World's Fair
The World's Fair was on when Line 1 opened on 19 July 1900, and so were the Olympics, which Paris staged as part of the fair.
Molière's reburial in 1817, alongside La Fontaine's, did the trick: the cemetery grew from 13 graves in 1804 to over 33,000 by 1830.
Q 24Sacré-Cœur was proposed in the aftermath of France's defeat in which war?
Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War defeat inspired the vow to build it, and its hilltop site, where the Commune began, still makes it controversial on the French left.
Q 25Sacré-Cœur stays brilliant white because its Château-Landon travertine does what when it rains?
Exudes calcite
Exudes calcite: rain draws it out of the stone. The First World War then pushed the basilica's consecration, planned for October 1914, back to 1919.
Q 26Which Paris cabaret, opened in 1889, is famed as the birthplace of the modern can-can?
Moulin Rouge
The Moulin Rouge won international fame fast, helped by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's posters and paintings of its dancers.
Q 27The Panthéon was originally built as a church dedicated to which patron of Paris?
Genevieve
Genevieve's church was barely finished when the National Assembly turned it into a tomb for great men, and Voltaire's remains arrived in July 1791.
Q 28Who was the first person entombed in the Panthéon after it was returned to mausoleum use in 1881?
Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo's state funeral drew more than two million mourners, and he was laid in the Panthéon ten days after his death in May 1885.
Q 29Who directed the boulevards, parks and sewers programme that gave Paris its modern look in 1853-70?
Georges-Eugène Haussmann
Georges-Eugène Haussmann's costs soared, and Jules Ferry mocked them in a pamphlet titled 'Les Comptes fantastiques d'Haussmann'.
Q 30The Paris Commune of 1871 governed the city for roughly how long before its bloody suppression?
Two months
Two months was long enough for the Commune to pull down the Vendôme Column that Napoleon had raised, before troops crushed it in May 1871.