Rome
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7correct to beat the crowd
99 free Rome trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Rome has been continuously inhabited for three millennia, was capital of a kingdom, a republic, an empire and the Papal States, and since 1871 has been the capital of Italy. It is the only city on earth that contains another country, it counts two sovereign entities inside its ring road, and it still draws more than eight million tourists a year to a historic centre that is a single World Heritage Site. This quiz is about the city itself rather than just its ancient history: the region and river, the seven hills, the lowest and highest points, the Mediterranean climate, the 15 municipi and 22 rioni, the mayor's palace that has been a town hall since 1144, Porta Pia and 1870, the Treaty of Rome, the FAO, Fiumicino and Termini, the metro line held up by archaeology, the talking statues, the obelisks, Cinecittà, the Stadio Olimpico, Sapienza, the Jewish Ghetto, carbonara and cacio e pepe, and the city Rome is exclusively twinned with. Fifty questions with four options each and a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a travel quiz night.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Rome is the capital of which Italian region?
Lazio
Lazio is the Italian form of Latium, and the Latin language, which Rome spread across its empire, takes its name from that region.
Q 02Which river flows through the centre of Rome?
Tiber
The Tiber's island, one legend says, grew from the grain of the exiled king Tarquin, which Romans threw into the river after overthrowing him.
Q 03Which Roman landmark was built on the site of the private lake of Nero's Golden House?
The Colosseum
The Colosseum rose where Nero's lake had been, in what is seen as Vespasian's populist gesture of handing land Nero had seized back to the people.
Q 04In legend, which twin founded Rome on the Palatine, one of its seven hills?
Romulus
Romulus and Remus quarrelled over which hill to build on, and in the most common telling Romulus killed Remus for leaping over his new walls.
Q 05Which Roman square keeps the long oval shape of the stadium Emperor Domitian built there?
Piazza Navona
Piazza Navona was deliberately flooded every weekend in August for more than two centuries, a summer spectacle that ended in the 1860s.
Q 06In Rome's founding legend, which animal suckled the abandoned twin babies?
A she-wolf
A she-wolf, though Livy and Plutarch record a rival telling: lupa also meant a prostitute, and the twins' foster mother, Acca Larentia, was said to be one.
Q 07Which Roman emperor renamed Rome after himself and fought as a gladiator in the arena?
Commodus
Commodus had Rome renamed Commodiana, but conspirators sent his wrestling partner Narcissus to strangle him in his bath.
Q 08Which country lies entirely within Rome's municipal boundaries?
Vatican City
Vatican City counts cardinals living elsewhere in Rome as citizens, and anyone who loses its citizenship with no other nationality automatically becomes Italian.
Q 09Which Catholic order of knights is recognised as sovereign and has its headquarters in Rome?
Order of Malta
The Order of Malta settled in Rome in 1834, decades after Napoleon drove it off Malta in 1798, and its two Rome headquarters enjoy extraterritorial status.
Q 10Which district of the city of Rome sits on the Tyrrhenian Sea coast?
Ostia
Ostia's ancient port once stood at the river mouth, but silt has pushed the coastline out, so its ruins now lie about 3 km from the sea.
Q 11Which ancient Roman temple, finished under Hadrian, still stands under its original concrete dome?
The Pantheon
The Pantheon survived so well largely because it stayed in use, having been converted into a Christian church early in its history.
Q 12Thousands of Spartacus's captured rebels were crucified along which road leading to Rome?
Via Appia
The Via Appia was lined with crosses from Capua to Rome, and although Crassus crushed the revolt, a rival general caught fleeing rebels on his way home and took much of the glory.
Q 13Which large park in Rome is famous for the art galleries inside its grounds?
Villa Borghese
Q 21Which UN agency has its world headquarters in Rome?
Food and Agriculture Organization
The Food and Agriculture Organization was first based in Washington and moved its headquarters to Rome in 1951.
Q 22Since 1956 Rome has been exclusively and reciprocally twinned with which city?
Paris
Paris signed the exclusive pact with Rome in 1956, and Paris's all-night arts festival, Nuit Blanche, was later taken up by Rome as the Notte Bianca.
Q 23Which luxury fashion house has had its headquarters in EUR's Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana since 2015?
Fendi
Fendi took a 15-year lease on the Fascist-era palace while also sponsoring the restoration of the Trevi Fountain.
Villa Borghese was built for Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, and only became a public park in 1903.
Q 14Which English Romantic poet died in Rome in 1821, aged just 25?
John Keats
John Keats went to Rome on his doctors' orders to seek a warmer climate, but died there of tuberculosis and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery.
Q 15Which Gothic king sacked Rome in 410, the first time it fell to a foreign enemy in about 800 years?
Alaric
Alaric's Goths carried off Emperor Honorius's half-sister, Galla Placidia, who later married Ataulf, the brother-in-law who succeeded Alaric as leader.
Q 16Which basilica is the cathedral of Rome, where the pope presides as the city's bishop?
St John Lateran
St John Lateran stands on the palace Constantine gave the Church, which remained the popes' main residence until the Middle Ages.
Q 17The Palazzo Senatorio, seat of Rome's city government, stands on which hill?
Capitoline
The Capitoline's temple, the Capitolium, gave English the word capitol, so the US Congress meets in a building whose name deliberately evokes republican Rome.
Q 18In legend, Rome's first settlers abducted women from which neighbouring people to populate the city?
Sabines
The Sabines went to war over it, until the abducted women rushed between the armies, pleading with fathers and husbands, and the two sides made peace.
Q 19Which palace is the official residence of the President of the Italian Republic?
Palazzo del Quirinale
Palazzo del Quirinale was the popes' summer residence until 1870, when Italy took Rome and the palace passed to Italy's kings.
Q 20Which organisation did six European nations create by signing the 1957 Treaty of Rome?
European Economic Community
The European Economic Community grew into today's EU, and its founding treaty lives on, renamed the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.
Q 24What is the common name of Rome's main intercontinental airport?
Fiumicino
Officially Leonardo da Vinci International, it handled over 49 million passengers in 2024, the most in Italy.
Q 25Which port town north of Rome on the Tyrrhenian Sea is the city's main harbour?
Civitavecchia
Civitavecchia grew from Centumcellae, the harbour town Emperor Trajan founded around AD 106.
Q 26What is the name of Rome's main railway station?
Termini
Termini's new station was planned in the late 1930s, but with the war intervening it was only built between 1947 and 1950.
Q 27Which astronomer did the Roman Inquisition try in 1633, sentencing him to house arrest?
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei was forced to recant the view that the Earth orbits the Sun, and his book defending it was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books.
Q 28Julius Caesar was stabbed at a Senate meeting held in a hall of which Roman theatre?
Theatre of Pompey
The Theatre of Pompey held a statue of Pompey, and Plutarch says Caesar, who had defeated Pompey in civil war, sank dying against its pedestal.
Q 29Which philosopher was burned alive for heresy in Rome's Campo de' Fiori in 1600?
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno refused to recant before the Roman Inquisition, and a statue of him now stands where the fire burned.
Q 30Enrico Fermi held the chair of theoretical physics at which Rome university, founded in 1303?
Sapienza
Sapienza lost Fermi in 1938: after collecting his Nobel Prize in Stockholm he never went home, moving on to America with his family.