Seven Wonders of the World
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50 free Seven Wonders of the World trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Travellers have been drawing up lists of seven wonders for more than two thousand years. The classical list gathered the most astonishing monuments of the Mediterranean world, from the Great Pyramid of Giza to the Colossus of Rhodes, and only one of them can be visited now. In 2007 a worldwide vote named a new seven, among them the Taj Mahal, Petra and Machu Picchu. This quiz covers both lists. Can you name a wonder from its story, say who built it, or place it on a modern map? The questions take in the builders, the gods and rulers the monuments honoured, how each ancient wonder was lost, and a few surprises about the Colosseum, the Great Wall of China, Chichen Itza and Christ the Redeemer. A handful look at the natural and modern engineering wonders that later lists added. It suits quiz night hosts, teachers, travellers planning a trip and anyone who has ever tried to name all seven from memory. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave with a story or two worth repeating.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Emma Lazarus's sonnet The New Colossus, named after the wonder at Rhodes, was cast on a plaque for which monument?
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty received the poem on a bronze tablet fixed inside its pedestal in 1903. Lazarus wrote it in 1883 to help raise money for that pedestal.
Q 02Which food was boiled into a soup and added to the mortar holding the Great Wall of China's bricks together?
Sticky rice
Sticky rice soup, stirred into slaked lime, made the mortar that holds the wall's bricks together. The grisly legend that workers' bones were mixed in is false.
Q 03Which film hero finds the Holy Grail inside a temple whose entrance is really the Treasury at Petra?
Indiana Jones
Indiana Jones reaches the Treasury in the climax of the 1989 film The Last Crusade. Only the facade is real: the temple's interior was filmed at a studio in England.
Q 04Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro had a finger damaged in January 2014 when the statue was hit by what?
Lightning
Lightning had also hit the statue in a 2008 storm, damaging its fingers, head and eyebrows. Rods in the head and arms are there to carry such strikes away.
Q 05Ancient writers say the Colosseum in Rome was flooded early in its history to stage which kind of spectacle?
Mock sea battles
Mock sea battles, known as naumachiae, are recorded for the arena's first years. They ended once Domitian had underground chambers built beneath the floor.
Q 06Tradition says the Temple of Artemis burned down in 356 BC on the very night which conqueror was born?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great later offered to pay for a new temple, but the Ephesians declined, saying it was not fitting for one god to build a temple to another.
Q 07At the equinoxes, shadows on El Castillo at Chichen Itza form which creature crawling down the stairs?
A serpent
A serpent seems to slide down the northern balustrade as the late-afternoon sun casts a row of triangular shadows. The pyramid was a temple to Kukulcán, a plumed snake deity.
Q 08The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the only ancient wonder never proven to exist, belong to which modern country?
Iraq
Iraq holds the ruins of Babylon, near the present-day city of Hillah, yet no trace of the gardens has been found there. Some scholars doubt they were ever built.
Q 09The Statue of Zeus, an ancient wonder, stood at the sanctuary that hosted which sporting festival?
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games were run by the people of Elis, who ordered the giant seated god for their new temple to outdo their rivals in Athens. The festival took place every four years.
Q 10Which Paris landmark was a finalist in the 2007 New 7 Wonders vote but missed out on a winning place?
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was one of thirteen finalists left out when the winners were named. Stonehenge, the Acropolis of Athens and the Sydney Opera House also fell short.
Q 11Petra, the rose-coloured city carved into sandstone cliffs and voted a New 7 Wonder, lies in which country?
Jordan
Jordan counts Petra as its most-visited attraction. The city lay unknown to the Western world until the traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt reached it in 1812.
Q 12Machu Picchu, an Inca citadel abandoned around the Spanish conquest, sits on an Andean ridge in which country?
Peru
Peru is home to the citadel, which stands about 2,430 metres up on a mountain ridge. Its palace complex is thought to have served as a seasonal royal retreat.
Q 13Chichen Itza, the Yucatán city crowned by the stepped pyramid El Castillo, was built by which people?
Maya
Maya people built the city, whose pyramid has about 91 steps on each of its four sides. With the top platform counted as a final step, the total may come to 365.
Q 21The Great Pyramid of Giza once gleamed under a smooth outer casing of which white stone, later stripped away?
Limestone
Limestone from the Tura quarries was ferried across the Nile to form the polished shell. Most of it was later removed, leaving the monument about eight metres shorter than when new.
Q 22In legend, which Babylonian king built the Hanging Gardens for a wife who missed her green homeland?
Nebuchadnezzar II
Nebuchadnezzar II is said to have raised the gardens for Amytis, his queen from Media. Yet his own long building inscriptions never mention a garden.
Q 23Which sculptor of the giant Athena inside the Parthenon also created the ancient Statue of Zeus?
Phidias
Q 14Which Mughal emperor ordered the Taj Mahal built at Agra as a tomb for his wife Mumtaz Mahal?
Shah Jahan
Shah Jahan commissioned the tomb in 1631 and was later buried in it himself, beside his wife. Its name is often translated as Crown of the Palace.
Q 15Which coral system, the largest on Earth and visible from space, did CNN name one of the Seven Natural Wonders?
Great Barrier Reef
The Great Barrier Reef is made up of more than 2,900 separate reefs and 900 islands off the coast of Queensland. It is the biggest single structure built by living things.
Q 16Which rail link with the world's longest undersea section did American engineers name a modern wonder?
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel runs about 50 kilometres from Folkestone in England to the European mainland. The American Society of Civil Engineers honoured it in 1994, the year it opened.
Q 17Sculptures from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and the Temple of Artemis ended up in which London institution?
British Museum
The British Museum holds slabs of the tomb's frieze showing Greeks battling Amazons. Charles Newton excavated the site in the 1850s and shipped his finds to London.
Q 18The ancient Statue of Zeus, seated on a cedarwood throne, was plated in gold and which other material?
Ivory
Ivory plates were fixed to a wooden frame beside the gold panels. The writer Pausanias reports that the figure was kept coated in olive oil to protect it from damp air.
Q 19The Great Pyramid of Giza, the only ancient wonder still standing, was built as the tomb of which pharaoh?
Khufu
Khufu, known to the Greeks as Cheops, ruled in Egypt's Fourth Dynasty, and his granite sarcophagus is still inside. His tomb was the tallest structure on Earth for over 3,700 years.
Q 20The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus both stood in which modern country?
Turkey
Turkey holds the sites of two of the seven: Ephesus lies near the town of Selçuk, and Halicarnassus is now a resort on the Aegean coast. Greece and Egypt also had two each.
Phidias built the seated god around 435 BC, and it stood about 12 metres tall. His workshop was rediscovered in the 1950s, close to where ancient writers said the figure was made.
Q 24The Colossus of Rhodes, the last ancient wonder built and the first to fall, was a bronze statue of which god?
Helios
Helios, the sun god, was the patron of Rhodes, and his figure rose about 33 metres. An earthquake felled it after only 54 years, so all seven wonders stood together for less than 60 years.
Q 25The people of Rhodes paid for the Colossus by selling what, abandoned by the army of Demetrius in 304 BC?
Siege equipment
Siege equipment left behind after the year-long attack fetched 300 talents. Iron and bronze from the abandoned weapons were also reforged for the statue itself.
Q 26The Lighthouse of Alexandria stood on which island, whose name gave Italian and Spanish their word for lighthouse?
Pharos
Pharos was a small island at the western edge of the Nile Delta, and its name lives on in the word faro. The tower took twelve years to build and cost 800 talents of silver.
Q 27The ancient Greeks called the seven wonders 'theamata', a travel-guide word that translates as what?
Sights
Sights, or things to be seen, is the meaning, because the list worked as a guidebook for Greek travellers. The word for wonders, thaumata, came into use later.
Q 28The best-known brick and stone stretches of the Great Wall of China were built under which dynasty?
Ming
Ming rulers, in power from 1368 to 1644, strengthened the wall after a defeat by the Oirats at the Battle of Tumu. Earlier fortifications were mostly rammed earth.
Q 29The Colosseum is believed to take its name from a colossal bronze statue of which emperor that stood nearby?
Nero
Nero had the giant figure set up at the entrance to his Golden House, and Hadrian later moved it beside the amphitheatre. It was modelled on the Colossus of Rhodes.
Q 30Which ancient trading people carved the rock-cut tombs of Petra, the New 7 Wonder that was once their capital?
Nabataeans
Nabataeans, once desert nomads, grew rich by turning the city into a hub on the incense trade routes. Its population peaked at about 20,000 in the first century AD.