The Seine Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free The Seine trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Seine trivia quiz follows the river from its source on the Langres plateau to the sea at Le Havre, with a long stop in Paris. The easy questions ask which country it flows through, which capital it divides into Left and Right Banks, which two natural islands sit in the middle of the city, which cathedral stands on one of them and what the Pont Neuf's name means. From there it moves through the bridges, the boats, the booksellers, the floods and the goddess who gave the river its name. The hard end is for people who have walked the quais more than once: the statue Parisians use to judge flood levels, the bridge Christo wrapped in 1985, the year the Vikings first sailed up to sack Paris, the parapet that collapsed under 45 tonnes of padlocks, the American who tested a steamboat beside the Tuileries, the century-old swimming ban that ended in 2025 and the count of boats in the 2024 Olympic opening ceremony. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on the Seine, Source-Seine, Sequana, the Pont Neuf, Pont de l'Alma, Pont des Arts, Pont Alexandre III, the Île de la Cité, Île Saint-Louis, the bouquinistes, the 1910 flood and the 2024 opening ceremony before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Paris, France and world rivers quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Seine-side Paris landmark served as the entrance gateway to the 1889 World's Fair?
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was meant to come down after 20 years, but later uses, notably as a radio telegraphy station, made it worth keeping.
Q 02The Seine empties into which body of water?
The English Channel
The English Channel is reached only after the Seine winds through Normandy in deep loops, formed because its valley slopes so gently.
Q 03The Seine rises about 30 km northwest of which Burgundian city?
Dijon
Dijon's archaeology museum now holds wooden figures that pilgrims left at the Seine's spring, rare survivors preserved for two thousand years by marshy ground.
Q 04Which river is the only one in France longer than the Seine?
Loire
The Loire is longer but dotted with sandbanks, while the Seine's steady, regular flow keeps it navigable for much of its length.
Q 05Which Paris art museum on the Seine's Left Bank was built as a railway station finished for the 1900 World's Fair?
Musée d'Orsay
The Musée d'Orsay's station soon became outdated as railways modernised, and it stood largely empty until the 1970s decision to make it a museum.
Q 06The Seine's Pont de Bir-Hakeim honours a 1942 battle in which country?
Libya
Libya's desert outpost of Bir Hakeim was held by the Free French against Rommel's army for over two weeks, until most of them broke out at night.
Q 07Sequana, the Seine's ancient name, was also the name of what?
A Gallo-Roman goddess of the river
Sequana was a Gallo-Roman goddess of the river, and worshippers left her models of eyes, limbs and organs, thought to show ills they hoped she would heal.
Q 08Under which prefect of the Seine did Paris buy the river's source in the 1860s?
Haussmann
Haussmann's project built a grotto at the spring with a nymph statue, but the original weathered so badly that a copy replaced it in 1934.
Q 09What does the name Pont Neuf, the oldest standing crossing of the Seine in Paris, literally mean?
New
New set it apart from older bridges lined with houses, and for centuries the open bridge was the centre of Paris life, crowded with shops, stalls and street performers.
Q 10Which king inaugurated the Pont Neuf in 1607 and has an equestrian statue where it crosses the Île de la Cité?
Henry IV
Henry IV's original statue was melted down for cannons during the Revolution; the one there now was cast in 1818 partly from a statue of General Desaix.
Q 11In 1985 which artist duo wrapped the Pont Neuf in fabric after years of negotiation with the city?
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo and Jeanne-Claude paid for the two-week wrapping themselves by selling preparatory drawings and models, and turned down all sponsorship.
Q 12The Île de la Cité and which other island are the two natural islands in the Seine in central Paris?
Île Saint-Louis
Île Saint-Louis was cattle pasture until the 1600s, when developers filled in the channel that split it in two and laid out the streets of grand houses seen today.
Q 13Which famous cathedral stands on the Île de la Cité?
Notre-Dame de Paris
Q 21The Pont des Arts, built 1802–1804 under Napoleon, was the first bridge in Paris made of what?
Metal
Metal here meant cast iron, until a barge brought down part of the bridge in 1979; the look-alike standing today is 1980s steel.
Q 22The lavishly ornamented Pont Alexandre III is named after a ruler of which country?
Russia
Russia's Nicholas II laid the first stone in 1896 for a bridge named after his father, built to show off the alliance between Paris and St Petersburg.
Q 23The gilt-bronze Fames atop the Pont Alexandre III's pillars restrain which mythical creature?
Pegasus
Pegasus rears on each pillar, reined in by Fame, while the steel arch below was kept as flat as possible so it would not block the view of the Invalides.
Notre-Dame de Paris had fallen into decay until the success of Victor Hugo's 1831 novel set there helped inspire its restoration.
Q 14The Hôtel-Dieu on the Île de la Cité is reputed to be the world's oldest what still in operation?
Hospital
Hospital is right: a hôtel-Dieu, 'hostel of God', was a town's church-run hospital. Fires ravaged the riverside original more than once, and in 1867-78 it was rebuilt across the cathedral square.
Q 15Before it took the name Paris, the Roman-era town on the Seine was known by what name?
Lutetia
Lutetia was the stronghold of the Parisii, who burned their own bridges to stop Caesar's general Labienus, lost the battle anyway, and later gave Paris its name.
Q 16Parisians gauge Seine floods by the water level on which statue at the Pont de l'Alma?
The Zouave
The Zouave's wet feet traditionally mean the riverside paths are shut, and in the great flood of 1910 the water climbed to his shoulders.
Q 17The Pont de l'Alma is named after an 1854 battle in which war?
The Crimean War
The Crimean War also supplied the bridge's original statues: four French soldiers of the campaign, only one of which stayed when it was rebuilt in the 1970s.
Q 18In Paris's Great Flood of 1910, the Seine spread beneath the city through the sewers and which other network?
The Métro
The Métro's first tunnel under the Seine had opened only weeks before; it flooded within days, and the water ran on through the line as far as Gare de l'Est.
Q 19A 2003 Seine flood alert set off France's biggest relocation of what since the Second World War?
Works of art
Works of art were at risk because Paris museums keep so much in underground storerooms beside the river, which a flood on the scale of 1910 would fill.
Q 20Which tourist ritual, begun around 2008, did Paris put a stop to on the Pont des Arts in 2015?
Attaching love locks
Attaching love locks ended after part of the parapet gave way under their weight; workers cut off about a million padlocks, some 45 tonnes, and fitted panels that nothing can be fixed to.
Q 24By city rule, the bouquinistes' book boxes along the Seine must all be painted what colour?
Dark green
Dark green is the only shade allowed: around 1900 the city ordered every box painted the same 'wagon green' as its Wallace fountains and Morris columns.
Q 25A quarter-scale copy of which monument stands on the Seine's Île aux Cygnes, facing its original?
The Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty copy went up in 1889 with its back to America; it was turned around in 1937 and now looks west toward its big sister across the Atlantic.
Q 26Paris's Bateaux Mouches excursion boats take their name from what?
A district of Lyon where they were built
A district of Lyon where they were built, La Mouche, named them; founder Jean Bruel then invented a 'Jean-Sébastien Mouche' as a 1953 April Fools' hoax.
Q 27Which saga hero reputedly led the 845 Viking raid up the Seine?
Ragnar Lothbrok
Ragnar Lothbrok is the tentative match for the 'Reginherus' of Frankish records, who left Paris only after King Charles the Bald paid 7,000 pounds of silver and gold.
Q 28Which last Grand Master of the Knights Templar was burned in 1314 on a Seine island?
Jacques de Molay
Jacques de Molay had confessed under torture; when he publicly took it back, King Philip IV had him burned as a relapsed heretic.
Q 29After her burning in 1431, whose ashes were reportedly thrown into the Seine from a bridge at Rouen?
Joan of Arc
Joan of Arc, burned as a heretic at 19, was cleared 25 years later when a papal court annulled the verdict, and the Church made her a saint in 1920.
Q 30Which American first successfully ran his steamboat on the Seine in Paris in 1803?
Robert Fulton
Robert Fulton's first hull broke under the engine's weight and sank; the strengthened 66-foot rebuild ran that August, four years before his Hudson River steamer.