Statue of Liberty
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92 free Statue of Liberty trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
14 free Statue of Liberty trivia questions with answers. How well do you know one of America's most iconic monuments? Take our Statue of Liberty trivia quiz to test your knowledge about this colossal gift from France. With 92 questions covering history, construction, and fascinating facts, this quiz will challenge both casual visitors and history enthusiasts alike.
30 of 92 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which federal agency has looked after the Statue of Liberty since 1933?
The National Park Service
The National Park Service took over in 1933, when a presidential order moved the statue out of the War Department's hands; the Army kept the rest of the island until 1937.
Q 02Statue of Liberty sculptor Bartholdi also made which giant sandstone animal, set below the citadel of Belfort?
A lion
A lion: the Lion of Belfort, 22 metres long and finished in 1880, honours the town's months of resistance to a Prussian siege in 1870-71, when Bartholdi himself served as a militia officer.
Q 03What covered the statue's face until its 1886 unveiling?
A French flag
A French flag veiled the face; Bartholdi, who was to release it on a signal, let it fall too early, and guns, whistles and cheers broke out while the speeches were still under way.
Q 04In 1984, UNESCO gave the Statue of Liberty which status, calling it a 'masterpiece of the human spirit'?
World Heritage Site
World Heritage Site status came in 1984, the year the statue closed for two years of repairs; UNESCO praised the way a sculptor and an engineer had joined art and engineering in one work.
Q 05What is the Statue of Liberty's formal title, announced with its French fundraising drive in 1875?
Liberty Enlightening the World
Liberty Enlightening the World was the name announced in 1875, when the Franco-American Union was formed to raise the statue's cost in France, leaving Americans to pay for the pedestal.
Q 06How many rays radiate from the crown of the Statue of Liberty?
Seven
Seven rays fan out like sunbeams, a second way, besides the torch, that Liberty lights the world; they are widely read as standing for the seven seas and seven continents.
Q 07What date is inscribed in Roman numerals on the Statue of Liberty's tablet?
July 4, 1776
July 4, 1776, the date of the Declaration of Independence, appears as JULY IV MDCCLXXVI; the tablet is a tabula ansata, a handled form from Roman art chosen to evoke the idea of law.
Q 08In the poem on the Statue of Liberty's plaque, the 'huddled masses' are yearning to do what?
Breathe free
Breathe free: Emma Lazarus wrote the poem in 1883 for an auction funding the pedestal, and it was nearly forgotten until her friends had it cast in bronze and mounted there in 1903.
Q 09Which French abolitionist first proposed a statue commemorating liberty for the United States?
Édouard de Laboulaye
Édouard de Laboulaye, a scholar of the US Constitution who backed the Union in the Civil War, hoped a monument to American liberty would stir the French to demand democracy of their own.
Q 10What symbolic object lies at the feet of the Statue of Liberty?
A broken chain
Bartholdi first wanted Liberty to hold the broken chain in her hand but judged that too divisive so soon after the Civil War, so it ended up under her robes at her feet, almost invisible from the ground.
Q 11For its 1885 voyage from France, the Statue of Liberty was taken apart into roughly how many pieces?
350
350 pieces, packed into 214 crates, crossed on the French navy ship Isère; they then waited on Bedloe's Island for almost a year because the pedestal was not finished.
Q 12Which newspaper publisher led the fundraising for the Statue of Liberty's pedestal?
Joseph Pulitzer
Joseph Pulitzer ran daily appeals in his New York World when the pedestal fund ran dry and work stopped; more than 120,000 people gave, most of them a dollar or less.
Q 13What colour was the Statue of Liberty when she was first completed and dedicated, before twenty years of weathering?
Reddish-brown
Q 21Which Central Park co-designer supervised the clean-up of Bedloe's Island before the 1886 dedication?
Frederick Law Olmsted
Frederick Law Olmsted, co-designer of Central Park, supervised the clean-up of Bedloe's Island before the October 1886 dedication; the crated statue had sat there since the Isère arrived in June 1885.
Q 22Where in New York City did the statue's arm and torch stand for several years to raise money?
Madison Square Park
Madison Square Park kept the arm on show until 1882; it was then shipped back to France so that it could be joined to the rest of the statue.
Q 23Public access to the statue's torch has been barred since 1916, after damage from what?
Reddish-brown and shiny at first, she oxidised to green within twenty years; Congress, thinking the verdigris was corrosion, voted money to paint her, and the public outcry helped save the patina, which actually protects the copper.
Q 14The Statue of Liberty's 1886 dedication procession gave rise to which New York tradition?
The ticker-tape parade
The ticker-tape parade began when traders near the Stock Exchange threw ticker tape from their windows as the dedication procession passed, and the city soon made it a standard welcome for heroes.
Q 15Before New York, Bartholdi pitched a similar torch-bearing colossus for which waterway?
The Suez Canal
Bartholdi proposed 'Egypt Carrying the Light to Asia' for the Suez Canal entrance at Port Said: a lighthouse shaped like a robed Egyptian peasant woman holding a torch. Khedive Isma'il Pasha turned it down over the cost.
Q 16The Statue of Liberty's copper skin is about as thick as which everyday objects pressed together?
Two pennies
Two pennies: the sheets are just 3/32 of an inch (2.4 mm) thick, hammered into shape by hand, which kept a 151-foot statue light enough to ship in crates and hang on an iron frame.
Q 17Which architect, famed for restoring France's medieval buildings, was the Statue of Liberty's first chief engineer?
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc settled on thin sheets of hammered copper for the skin, but he died in 1879 with the inside unresolved, and a second engineer had to work out how to hold it up.
Q 18The statue's arm and torch were first shown in the United States at which event?
The Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia
The Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia showed the arm and torch in 1876, and visitors climbed to the torch's balcony; the arm then spent years in a New York park to drum up donations.
Q 19The statue's pedestal stands inside Fort Wood, a disused army base built in the shape of what?
An eleven-point star
An eleven-point star: New York State had ceded the island to the federal government for harbour defences, so the site Bartholdi wanted for his statue was already national property.
Q 20The New York World promised every donor to the statue's pedestal fund what reward?
Their name in print
Their name in print: the publisher vowed to list every giver, however small the sum, and gifts came in so fast that the stalled work on the pedestal was soon ordered to resume.
A German sabotage explosion
A German sabotage explosion: agents blew up the Black Tom munitions depot on the New Jersey shore, packed with arms bound for the Allies, while the United States was still neutral in the First World War.
Q 24Which president used the Antiquities Act in 1924 to declare the statue a national monument?
Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge made the statue a national monument in 1924 while the Army still held the island around it, and Ellis Island was folded into the monument four decades later.
Q 25Liberty Island sits in New Jersey waters but belongs to which New York City borough?
Manhattan
Manhattan: an 1834 compact ran the state line down the middle of the bay but left the island itself to New York, so it is an exclave of Manhattan ringed by New Jersey water.
Q 26Which car-industry boss chaired the 1980s commission that raised money to restore the Statue of Liberty?
Lee Iacocca
Lee Iacocca, then Chrysler's chairman, was named by Reagan in 1982 to lead the drive; it raised more than $350 million from private donors to repair both the statue and Ellis Island.
Q 27Which French president attended the statue's 1986 centennial rededication alongside Ronald Reagan?
François Mitterrand
François Mitterrand, French president since 1981, joined Ronald Reagan on July 3, 1986, as Reagan relit the torch to open 'Liberty Weekend'; Reagan declared, 'We are the keepers of the flame of liberty.'
Q 28After eight years closed following 9/11, the Statue of Liberty's crown reopened in 2009 on which holiday?
Independence Day
Independence Day: the Interior Secretary announced the July 4 reopening as a 'special gift' to America, though only a limited number of visitors a day would be allowed to make the climb.
Q 29The statue reopened on 28 October 2012, only to close a day later ahead of which storm?
Hurricane Sandy
Hurricane Sandy made landfall on 29 October 2012, the day after the statue reopened from a year-long safety renovation; the storm spared the statue but wrecked the ferry docks on Liberty and Ellis Islands.
Q 30What name does Emma Lazarus's poem give the Statue of Liberty?
Mother of Exiles
Mother of Exiles is the poem's name for her, recasting a monument meant to honour liberty and Franco-American friendship as a welcome to immigrants arriving by sea.