60 free Rhine trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Rhine rises in the Swiss Alps, forms borders with Liechtenstein, Austria, Germany and France, and reaches the North Sea through the Netherlands after about 1,230 kilometres. This quiz follows it downstream: the Tomasee and the two headstreams that meet at Reichenau, Lake Constance and the Rhine Falls, the knee at Basel, the straightened Upper Rhine, the castle-lined gorge past the Lorelei, the Rhine-Ruhr industrial belt and Europe's biggest inland port, and the delta where the Waal takes two-thirds of the water to Rotterdam. It also covers what happened on its banks: the Roman frontier, Cologne Cathedral, the Nibelung legends and Wagner's Rhinegold, Riesling and the Rheingau, the Rhine crisis and 'Die Wacht am Rhein', the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, Montgomery's Operation Plunder, the 1986 Sandoz spill and the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal. Questions run from easy (which sea the Rhine flows into) to expert (which distributary carries a ninth of the flow). Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Rhine, its sections, cities, landmarks and history, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Germany, Danube and rivers of Europe quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Rhine empties into which sea?
The North Sea
After running north through Germany it swings west across the Netherlands to the delta around Rotterdam.
Q 02The Rhine begins in which Swiss canton?
Graubünden
Its two headstreams, the Anterior and Posterior Rhine, meet at Reichenau to form the Alpine Rhine.
Q 03Roughly how long is the Rhine?
1,230 km
That makes it the second-longest river in Central and Western Europe after the Danube, draining 185,000 square kilometres.
Q 04The Rhine's name derives from Rēnos, a word from which ancient language?
Gaulish
It comes from a root meaning 'to flow', shared with Italy's river Reno; the 'Rh' spelling is a Greek habit.
Q 05Which lake, source of the Anterior Rhine near the Oberalp Pass, is usually named the Rhine's source?
Lai da Tuma (Tomasee)
It sits at 2,345 metres; the Posterior Rhine starts from the Paradies Glacier below the Rheinwaldhorn.
Q 06Where do the Anterior and Posterior Rhine join to form the Alpine Rhine?
Reichenau in Tamins
From there it forms Switzerland's border with Liechtenstein and then Austria before reaching the big lake.
Q 07Which tiny country's border with Switzerland is formed by the Alpine Rhine?
Liechtenstein
Downstream it also separates Switzerland from Austria before entering the Bodensee on Austrian soil.
Q 08The Rhine flows through which large body of water shared by Germany, Switzerland and Austria?
Lake Constance
The lake has three parts: the Obersee, the Untersee and a connecting 4 km stretch called the Seerhein.
Q 09What are the dimensions of the Rhine Falls near Schaffhausen?
150 m wide, 23 m high
They are the most powerful waterfall in Europe, formed 14,000 to 17,000 years ago in the last ice age.
Q 10Which tributary, joining near Koblenz in the canton of Aargau, more than doubles the Rhine's flow?
The Aare
It brings water from the Finsteraarhorn, the highest point of the whole Rhine basin at 4,274 metres.
Q 11At which city does the 'Rhine knee' turn the river from flowing west to flowing north?
Basel
The bend, entirely in Swiss territory, marks the boundary between the High Rhine and the Upper Rhine.
Q 12Which engineer is credited with 'domesticating' the Upper Rhine by straightening it in the 19th century?
Johann Gottfried Tulla
His works cut floods and malarial bogs, though one stretch turned into rapids where the river ate down to bare rock.
Q 13Which French city on the Upper Rhine is the seat of the European Parliament?
Strasbourg
It also hosts the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights, and the Rhine tributary Ill runs through it.
Q 21Koblenz began as a Roman military post founded around 8 BC by whom?
Drusus
Its name comes from the Latin Confluentes, 'the merging rivers'.
Q 22At which city, where the Sieg flows in, does the Rhine leave the gorge and become the Lower Rhine?
Bonn
From here it drops from 50 to 12 metres above sea level across the North German Plain.
Q 23Cologne Cathedral, on the Rhine, was begun in 1248 and finished to its medieval plan in which year?
1880
At 157 metres it was then the tallest building in the world, after 632 years of construction; it is still the world's tallest twin-spired church.
Q 14Which two French departments in Alsace are named after the Rhine?
Bas-Rhin and Haut-Rhin
Germany has two states named for it too: North Rhine-Westphalia and Rhineland-Palatinate.
Q 15Which river joins the Rhine opposite Mainz?
The Main
The Neckar joins at Mannheim and the Ill below Strasbourg; the Moselle arrives further down at Koblenz.
Q 16The Rhine Gorge between Rüdesheim and Koblenz was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which year?
2002
The 65 km 'Romantic Rhine' has roughly 40 hilltop castles, many ruined in the Thirty Years' War.
Q 17How tall is the Lorelei, the slate rock at Sankt Goarshausen famed for its siren legend?
132 metres
Shipwrecks there have been recorded since the 10th century; the name may mean 'murmuring rock' after the echo.
Q 18Which of the 40 hill castles between Bingen and Koblenz was never destroyed or left to decay?
Marksburg
It stands above Braubach and was first mentioned in 1231; Maus Castle is the only other never destroyed.
Q 19Pfalzgrafenstein Castle sits on an island in the Rhine near Kaub. What was it built for in 1327?
Collecting river tolls
Tolls were collected until 1867; in 1814 Russian and Prussian forces used it to cross the river against Napoleon.
Q 20The Deutsches Eck in Koblenz is the promontory where which river joins the Rhine?
The Moselle
It is named after a Teutonic Order commandry and carries a huge equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I, rebuilt in 1993.
Q 24Which Rhine city hosts Europe's largest inland port?
Duisburg
Duisport sits where the Ruhr meets the Rhine and feeds the sea ports of Rotterdam, Antwerp and Amsterdam.
Q 25The Rhine-Ruhr region, which the Lower Rhine flows through, is what?
Germany's largest conurbation
Cologne, Düsseldorf and the Ruhr cities line its banks, and most of the river's factories are here.
Q 26Which Dutch distributary carries about 65 percent of the Rhine's water?
The Waal
It flows about 80 km past Nijmegen towards Rotterdam; the IJssel takes only a ninth of the flow north to the IJsselmeer.
Q 27The IJssel branch of the Rhine flows north into which body of water?
The IJsselmeer
Until the Afsluitdijk closed it in 1932, that inland lake was the tidal Zuiderzee.
Q 28The Old Rhine (Oude Rijn) reaches the North Sea through a sluice at which Dutch town?
Katwijk
This branch once marked the line of the Roman frontier, the Limes Germanicus.
Q 29About 11,000 years ago, where was the Rhine's estuary?
In the Strait of Dover
Dry land called Doggerland still linked Europe to Britain across the southern North Sea until about 9,000 years ago.
Q 30Which port overtook Rotterdam in 2004 as the world's busiest by cargo tonnage?
Singapore
It remains Europe's largest seaport and the biggest outside Asia.