Philadelphia Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Philadelphia trivia questions with answers. Philadelphia trivia for natives, transplants and anyone planning a visit. This quiz covers the whole city: William Penn's founding in 1682 and what the name means in Greek, the years Philly served as the nation's capital, the truth about the Liberty Bell's crack, why City Hall was briefly the tallest building on the planet, and the gentlemen's agreement that produced the Curse of Billy Penn. It also covers the things Philadelphians actually argue about: who invented the cheesesteak, whether the hoagie came from Hog Island, the Mummers' five divisions, the 72 Rocky steps, Boathouse Row's lights, Wawa's goose, the Philly Special and the city's long list of American firsts. Sports, TV and music get a look in too, from American Bandstand to the Roots. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and is marked on every question. 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 01Philadelphia's name is Greek for what?
Brotherly love
Brotherly love comes from the Greek philos, 'beloved', and adelphos, 'brother', and the city's founder wanted a place where people of every faith could worship freely.
Q 02Philadelphia's founder gave many of its streets names taken from what?
Trees
Trees supplied the names: in 1684 Wynne Street, named for Thomas Wynne's home there, became Chestnut Street.
Q 03What drove Congress out of Philadelphia to Princeton in 1783?
A soldiers' mutiny
A soldiers' mutiny by unpaid Continental troops surrounded the building where Congress met, and the episode later pushed the framers toward a federal capital district.
Q 04Which Native American people lived at Shackamaxon on the site of Philadelphia?
The Lenape
The Lenape leader Tamanend is said to have pledged peace with the colonists at Shackamaxon, now Kensington and Fishtown, under an elm that fell in 1810.
Q 05The Liberty Bell was cast in 1752 by a London firm later renamed what?
The Whitechapel Foundry
The Whitechapel Foundry's bell cracked when first rung in Philadelphia, so local metalworkers John Pass and John Stow melted it down and recast it, adding their names.
Q 06Which movement first gave the Liberty Bell its name and adopted it as a symbol?
The abolitionists
The abolitionists' Anti-Slavery Record first called it the Liberty Bell in 1835, and George Lippard's 1847 story invented the tale of it ringing on July 4, 1776.
Q 07The Liberty Bell's inscription begins 'Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the' what?
Inhabitants thereof
Inhabitants thereof closes the bell's quotation of Leviticus 25:10, and the bell spells the colony 'Pensylvania', the same variant Alexander Hamilton used on the Constitution's signature page.
Q 08Independence Hall was originally built as what?
The Pennsylvania State House
The Pennsylvania State House was completed in 1753, and both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were debated and adopted in its Assembly Room.
Q 09Independence Hall has appeared on the back of which US banknote since 1928?
The $100 bill
The $100 bill has shown Independence Hall on its back since 1928, and John Trumbull's painting set in the hall's Assembly Room appears on the back of the $2 bill.
Q 10When its tower was finished in 1894, Philadelphia City Hall held what world record?
Tallest habitable building
Tallest habitable building in the world was City Hall's title from 1894 until New York's Singer Building passed its 548 feet in 1908.
Q 11Whose 37-foot bronze statue stands on top of City Hall?
William Penn
William Penn's statue by Alexander Milne Calder weighs over 53,000 pounds, and Calder made more than 250 other sculptures for the building.
Q 12Which 1987 event did Philadelphia fans blame for a sports title drought?
A skyscraper rising above the City Hall statue
A skyscraper rising above the City Hall statue, One Liberty Place, broke a long gentlemen's agreement on height, and no major Philadelphia team won a title again until 2008.
Q 13Which building, completed in 2018, was the tallest in the US outside Manhattan and Chicago as of 2025?
Q 21The bronze statue of Stallone's boxer at the museum steps was originally commissioned for which movie?
Rocky III
Rocky III brought A. Thomas Schomberg's bronze to the top of the museum steps, and after filming the city moved it to the Spectrum before it returned to the base of the steps in 2006.
Q 22Philadelphia's museum parkway was designed in 1917 by Jacques Greber to emulate which famous boulevard?
The Champs-Elysees
The Champs-Elysees ends at the Arc de Triomphe, and the parkway ends at the Art Museum, giving 'a slice of Paris in Philadelphia'.
Q 23Which song is the Mummers Parade's traditional theme?
Oh, Dem Golden Slippers
Comcast Technology Center
Comcast Technology Center rises 1,121 feet, more than double City Hall's 548, and its Four Seasons hotel has its lobby on the 60th floor.
Q 14Which two hot-dog-stand brothers are credited with inventing the cheesesteak?
Pat and Harry Olivieri
Pat and Harry Olivieri ran a hot dog stand when they first grilled chopped steak and onions, and Pat's son dates the cheese to 1951, added by manager 'Cocky Joe' Lorenza.
Q 15Which cheesesteak shop, founded in 1966, faces its older rival across 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue?
Geno's
Geno's founder Joey Vento named his son Geno in 1971, and Geno took over the shop after his father died in 2011.
Q 16Per a popular account, 'hoagie' comes from Italian-American workers at a WWI shipyard known as what?
Hog Island
Hog Island's shipyard workers, one legend says, ate the 'Hog Island' sandwich that became the hoagie, which Mayor Ed Rendell later declared Philadelphia's official sandwich.
Q 17Which snack-cake company, maker of the Butterscotch Krimpet, was founded in Philadelphia in 1914?
Tastykake
Tastykake's most popular product, Kandy Kakes, sells so well that nearly half a million are baked and packaged each day.
Q 18The convenience chain Wawa is named after a Pennsylvania town whose name comes from an Ojibwe word for what?
Snow goose
The first Wawa Food Market opened in Folsom in 1964, though the logo shows a Canada goose rather than a snow goose.
Q 19Reading Terminal Market opened in 1893 under what?
A railroad's elevated train shed
A railroad's elevated train shed, the Reading Railroad's, roofed a market moved indoors after the city judged open-air street markets unhygienic and a traffic hazard.
Q 20Rocky's run up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps was one of the first big-screen uses of which camera rig?
Steadicam
Steadicam, invented by Garrett Brown, carried the camera smoothly up the 72 steps, though Rocky was only the third film to use the rig.
Oh, Dem Golden Slippers, an 1879 minstrel song by African American composer James A. Bland, is the unofficial anthem of a parade the city first made official in 1901.
Q 24Which Mummers Parade division plays banjos, saxophones and accordions but no brass instruments?
String Bands
String Bands are limited to unamplified strings, reeds and percussion, so saxophones and banjos march but trumpets stay home.
Q 25What delayed the opening of Philadelphia's zoo, chartered in 1859, until 1874?
The Civil War
The Civil War put the chartered zoo on hold, and when America's first zoo opened on 1 July 1874 it had 1,000 animals and charged 25 cents.
Q 26Which Old City lane, lined with 32 houses, is called the nation's oldest residential street?
Elfreth's Alley
Elfreth's Alley began about 1703 as a cart path two neighbours opened between their properties, and its houses went up over more than a century.
Q 27Which polymath established the Library Company of Philadelphia, the nation's first, in 1731?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin got his Junto club to pool money for books, and the Library Company later served as the Library of Congress while the government sat in Philadelphia.
Q 28The Philadelphia bourse, owned by Nasdaq since 2008, holds what distinction?
Nation's oldest stock exchange
Nation's oldest stock exchange: it opened in 1790 as the Board of Brokers of Philadelphia and, as Nasdaq PHLX, now specialises in options.
Q 29The 1793 epidemic that killed roughly ten percent of Philadelphia's population was an outbreak of what?
Yellow fever
Yellow fever killed 5,000 or more people, and by the end of September 20,000 residents had fled, while President Washington left for Mount Vernon.
Q 30Which invention was exhibited at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Fairmount Park, the first official US World's Fair?
Bell's telephone
Bell's telephone was set up at opposite ends of Machinery Hall, and the fair drew nearly 10 million visitors between May and November.