St. Petersburg
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49 free St. Petersburg trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
St. Petersburg was willed into existence on a Baltic swamp in 1703 by a tsar who wanted a window to Europe, and it spent two centuries as the capital of the Russian Empire before the Bolsheviks took the government back to Moscow. Along the way it changed its name three times, survived the most lethal siege in modern history, and kept a skyline of Baroque palaces that newer capitals bulldozed. These 49 questions run from the easy landmarks everyone photographs (the Hermitage, Nevsky Prospekt, the Bronze Horseman) to the details that separate tourists from locals: which Swedish fort Peter captured first, who conducted the Seventh Symphony inside the blockade, which bridge was the first to cross the Neva without being drawn, and why the surrounding oblast is still called Leningrad. There are questions on the city's writers and composers, on Zenit and SKA, on the noon cannon and the drawbridges, and on the Lakhta Center that now towers over the Gulf of Finland. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even on a miss. Play solo, or print it for a Russia-themed quiz night alongside our Moscow set.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which river does St. Petersburg stand?
The Neva
The Neva fans into a delta at the Gulf of Finland, so the city spreads across dozens of islands, and its bridges and canals earned it the nickname "Venice of the North".
Q 02Which ruler founded St. Petersburg in 1703?
Peter the Great
Peter the Great wanted a seaport facing western Europe, so he built his "window on Europe" on marshy islands his army had only just captured.
Q 03Which St. Petersburg jeweller made jewelled Easter eggs for Russia's last two tsars?
Fabergé
Fabergé made the first in 1885 as a tsar's Easter gift to his wife: an enamel egg hiding a golden yolk and a tiny gold hen. The custom lasted until the revolution.
Q 04What was St. Petersburg called from 1914 to 1924?
Petrograd
Petrograd, a Russian form of the name, replaced the German-sounding original weeks after Russia went to war with Germany in 1914.
Q 05What name did St. Petersburg carry from 1924 until 1991?
Leningrad
Leningrad never fully vanished: when the city took back its old name in 1991, the surrounding region stayed Leningrad Oblast, as it still is.
Q 06St. Petersburg voted to restore its name the day Russia first elected which president?
Yeltsin
Yeltsin won Russia's first presidential election on 12 June 1991, the day of the city's vote; two months later he rallied Moscow against a hard-line coup, and by the year's end the Soviet Union was gone.
Q 07What does St. Petersburg call its summer weeks when the sky never fully darkens?
White nights
White nights come from the city's latitude, close to 60° north: around midsummer the sun dips only a little below the horizon, so twilight lasts until dawn.
Q 08What killed most civilians who died in St. Petersburg's 872-day World War II siege?
Starvation
Starvation: with the city encircled, the daily bread ration shrank to a couple of thin slices, and hundreds of thousands of people died in the first winter alone.
Q 09During the World War II siege, supplies reached St. Petersburg across the ice of which lake, Europe's largest?
Ladoga
Ladoga's winter ice became the "Road of Life": trucks and sleds crossed the frozen lake with food and fuel and carried evacuees out the other way.
Q 10Who moved the Soviet government from St. Petersburg to Moscow in March 1918?
Lenin
Lenin's move handed the title of capital back to Moscow, which had lost it to St. Petersburg two centuries earlier.
Q 11Which museum occupies the former imperial residence on St. Petersburg's Palace Embankment?
The Hermitage
The Hermitage began in 1764 as an empress's private gallery beside her palace and stayed closed to the public for almost ninety years, until 1852.
Q 12The storming of the Winter Palace in 1917 is known as which event?
October Revolution
The October Revolution fell on 7 November by today's reckoning: Russia still kept the old Julian calendar, which by then ran 13 days behind the Gregorian one.
Q 13As of 2025, Europe's tallest building is St. Petersburg's Lakhta Center, the headquarters of which Russian energy giant?
Gazprom
Q 21Why are St. Petersburg's main river bridges closed to traffic for hours on summer nights?
To let ships through
To let ships through: from April to November the big spans are raised each night for cargo vessels, cutting the islands off from each other while crowds gather to watch.
Q 22Which St. Petersburg museum, begun in 1714 as a tsar's collection of curiosities, is often called Russia's first?
Kunstkamera
The Kunstkamera spent its early years in a mansion confiscated from a nobleman who was executed in 1718 for plotting with the tsar's son, until its own building was ready.
Q 23Which composer was among the first graduates of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, founded by Anton Rubinstein in 1862?
Gazprom first planned its tower in the old centre, opposite Smolny Cathedral; protests over the historic skyline pushed the 462-metre building out to the city's edge.
Q 14What is the name of St. Petersburg's main avenue?
Nevsky Prospekt
Nevsky Prospekt began as the start of the road to Novgorod and is named for the Alexander Nevsky Monastery at its far end.
Q 15St. Petersburg's Bronze Horseman statue shares its name with a famous poem by which Russian writer?
Alexander Pushkin
Alexander Pushkin's poem has the bronze rider come to life after a flood and chase a poor young man through the empty streets, and it made the statue's nickname stick.
Q 16The 1825 Decembrist revolt was directed against which new tsar?
Nicholas I
Nicholas I became tsar only because his elder brother Constantine had given up the throne; rebel officers used the confusion to stop troops swearing loyalty, and five of them were hanged.
Q 17Which tsar's 1881 murder is marked by St. Petersburg's Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood?
Alexander II
Alexander II, who had freed Russia's serfs in 1861, was mortally wounded by a revolutionary's bomb, and the church was built on the very spot where he fell.
Q 18Rastrelli's 1750s Winter Palace is a landmark of which architectural style?
Baroque
Baroque: Rastrelli's lavish version is named Elizabethan Baroque after the empress who approved his design in 1754 but died shortly before the palace was finished.
Q 19Which St. Petersburg cathedral took architect Auguste de Montferrand 40 years to build?
Saint Isaac's Cathedral
Saint Isaac's Cathedral went up between 1818 and 1858; the Soviets closed it and made it a museum in the 1930s, and as of 2025 it still is one.
Q 20Which war does the Alexander Column, unveiled in 1834 on St. Petersburg's Palace Square, commemorate?
Patriotic War of 1812
The Patriotic War of 1812 is Russia's name for the defeat of Napoleon's invasion; the column's 600-tonne granite shaft was hauled upright in under two hours, with no modern cranes to help.
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Tchaikovsky enrolled while a clerk at the Ministry of Justice and soon quit the post for music; he graduated in 1865 and left at once to teach at the new conservatory in Moscow.
Q 24Which composer dedicated his Seventh Symphony to St. Petersburg during the World War II siege?
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich's symphony was played inside the blockaded city in August 1942 by a depleted orchestra, while loudspeakers carried the music out toward the German lines.
Q 25Which treasure did German troops strip from the Catherine Palace near St. Petersburg in 1941, never to be found?
The Amber Room
The Amber Room was dismantled in 36 hours and shipped to Königsberg, where its trail ends; a replica that took craftsmen more than twenty years opened in the palace in 2003.
Q 26By what name was St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theatre known for most of the Soviet era?
Kirov
Kirov was the name its ballet carried to Paris in 1961, when its young star Rudolf Nureyev slipped his KGB minders at the airport and asked for asylum.
Q 27Which football club is St. Petersburg's main team?
Zenit
Zenit won six Russian league titles in a row from 2019 to 2024, then lost a seventh to Krasnodar on the final day of the 2024–25 season.
Q 28Which European trophy did St. Petersburg's leading football club win in 2008?
UEFA Cup
The UEFA Cup came with a 2–0 win over Rangers in Manchester, and man of the match Andrey Arshavin, born in the city, earned a record move to Arsenal months later.
Q 29Who was murdered in the cellar of St. Petersburg's Yusupov Palace in December 1916?
Grigori Rasputin
Grigori Rasputin was lured there by Prince Felix Yusupov, whose memoir claimed poison and bullets could not kill him; in fact little is certain beyond three gunshot wounds.
Q 30Which team did France beat 1–0 in the 2018 World Cup semi-final played in St. Petersburg?
Belgium
Belgium went out to a header from French defender Samuel Umtiti at the Krestovsky Stadium, which had opened only a year earlier after almost a decade of building work.