Stuttgart
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50 free Stuttgart trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Stuttgart is the capital of Baden-Württemberg and one of Germany's wealthiest cities, yet it sits in a leafy bowl of hills where vineyards run almost into the centre. It is a place of engineers and inventors, of dukes and kings, and of Swabian habits that outsiders find both baffling and charming. This quiz collects the fun facts people actually go looking for: how the city got its name, which world-famous companies started in its workshops, what its best-known landmarks and museums are hiding, what locals eat and drink, and which writers, thinkers, film-makers and footballers grew up here. History, football and a few very odd local traditions are in the mix too. It is written for travellers planning a trip, expats and students settling in, pub quizzers, and anyone with roots in the region. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing the story behind the fact.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Stuttgart takes its name from which kind of establishment, founded around 950 by Duke Liudolf of Swabia?
A stud farm
A stud farm for warhorses gave Stuttgart its name: the Old High German 'Stuotgarten' was set up during the Hungarian invasions to supply the duke's cavalry.
Q 02Which carmaker, based in Stuttgart's Zuffenhausen district, places the city's coat of arms at the centre of its logo?
Porsche
Porsche built its crest around Stuttgart's arms and framed them with the arms of the former Free People's State of Württemberg, whose capital the city was.
Q 03A museum in Stuttgart's former slaughterhouse shows more than 50,000 exhibits devoted to which animal?
Pigs
Pigs are the whole theme of the Schweinemuseum, which began as a private collection of lucky-pig charms and now fills 27 themed rooms.
Q 04Stuttgart's television tower, opened in 1956 and copied worldwide, was the first such tower built from which material?
Reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete let the tower rise as a slim needle with a 'basket' on top, the shape that broadcasting towers around the world went on to follow.
Q 05Which meat-filled Swabian dumplings, a Stuttgart staple, were by one legend invented by monks hiding meat during Lent?
Maultaschen
Maultaschen carry EU protected status, so the genuine article is made only in Swabia; the legend credits the Cistercian monks of Maulbronn Abbey.
Q 06Stuttgart's Cannstatter Volksfest, now a giant beer festival, was founded in 1818 to mark the end of what?
A famine
A famine had followed the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, whose volcanic winter ruined harvests; the first festival honoured farming with a column of fruit and grain.
Q 07Which Stuttgart zoo and botanical garden grew out of a Moorish-style royal bathhouse inspired by the Alhambra?
Wilhelma
Wilhelma was planned from 1837 for King William I of Württemberg, and its historic buildings now stand inside a combined zoological and botanical garden.
Q 08Which philosopher, famous for his dialectic, was born in 1770 in a Stuttgart house that is now a museum?
Georg Hegel
Georg Hegel left Stuttgart at eighteen for the Tübingen seminary, where his roommates were the poet Hölderlin and the future philosopher Schelling.
Q 09Which river flows through Stuttgart on its way to join the Rhine at Mannheim?
Neckar
The Neckar rises near Schwenningen on the edge of the Black Forest and also passes the university towns of Tübingen and Heidelberg.
Q 10Stuttgart's more than 400 'Stäffele', a legacy of its hillside vineyards, are what kind of feature?
Stairways
Stairways once linked the terraced vines, and when houses replaced them the steps stayed on as footpaths between the new neighbourhoods: about 20 km in all.
Q 11Which engineer opened a workshop for precision mechanics in Stuttgart in 1886 that grew into a giant car-parts supplier?
Robert Bosch
Robert Bosch made his name with ignition systems for engines and was one of the first German industrialists to give his workers an eight-hour day.
Q 12Which engineer built the first petrol-engined motorcycle in 1885 in a garden workshop in Cannstatt, now in Stuttgart?
Gottlieb Daimler
Gottlieb Daimler and his partner Wilhelm Maybach worked so secretively that neighbours reported them as suspected counterfeiters; police raided the summer house and found only engines.
Q 13Which militant group's leaders, including Andreas Baader, died in Stuttgart's Stammheim Prison in 1977?
Q 21Stuttgart's Mercedes-Benz Museum fits its exhibition onto a small plot with an interior laid out in which shape?
A double helix
A double helix packs 16,500 square metres of displays onto a small plot, and visitors can swap between the two tours at any point.
Q 22Two houses on Stuttgart's 1927 Weissenhof Estate became World Heritage Sites in 2016 as works of which architect?
Le Corbusier
Le Corbusier was handed the two prime plots, facing the city, and by far the largest budget of the seventeen architects who built on the estate.
Q 23Patch Barracks in Stuttgart houses the European Command headquarters of which country's armed forces?
United States
Red Army Faction
The Red Army Faction's leaders were held in a high-security wing, and three of them died within hours of each other in October 1977, just after the hostages on a hijacked Lufthansa jet were rescued.
Q 14Whose reordering of the German states in 1806 turned Württemberg, ruled from Stuttgart, into a kingdom?
Napoleon Bonaparte
Napoleon Bonaparte was rewarding an ally: Frederick took the title of king, joined the Confederation of the Rhine and supplied troops for the French campaigns.
Q 15Which striker, who trained as a baker in his family's Stuttgart shop, won the 1990 World Cup with West Germany?
Jürgen Klinsmann
Jürgen Klinsmann finished his baker's apprenticeship in 1982, having turned professional with Stuttgarter Kickers, and went on to star for VfB Stuttgart.
Q 16Which Stuttgart-born director made the Hollywood blockbusters Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow?
Roland Emmerich
Roland Emmerich grew up in nearby Sindelfingen, and his Independence Day became the first film to gross $100 million in less than a week.
Q 17Which writer finished his first play, The Robbers, while studying medicine at a military academy in Stuttgart?
Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller served briefly as a regimental doctor before leaving Stuttgart, and since 1839 a statue of him has stood on the square now called Schillerplatz.
Q 18Stuttgart Airport is named after a long-serving mayor who was the son of which Second World War field marshal?
Erwin Rommel
Erwin Rommel's only son Manfred ran Stuttgart from 1974 to 1996 and befriended the sons of his father's battlefield adversaries, Patton and Montgomery.
Q 19Stuttgart's mineral water deposits are the second largest in Europe after those of which capital city?
Budapest
Budapest is the only European city to outdo Stuttgart, where more than 250 springs rise inside the urban area.
Q 20Stuttgart 21, the project that drew mass street protests in 2010, puts which piece of city infrastructure underground?
The main station
The main station's 16-track terminus gives way to an eight-track through station below ground, so that long-distance trains can run straight through the city.
The United States named the base after General Alexander Patch; during the Second World War the same barracks had housed a German tank regiment.
Q 24Which US state has a town named after Stuttgart that calls itself the Rice and Duck Capital of the World?
Arkansas
Arkansas owes the name to the Reverend Adam Bürkle, a Württemberg-born minister who founded the settlement in 1880.
Q 25Stuttgart's Birkenkopf hill grew about 40 metres taller in the 1950s when it was piled with what?
Wartime rubble
Wartime rubble from the bombed city, 1.5 million cubic metres of it, was hauled up between 1953 and 1957, and locals nicknamed the result Monte Scherbelino.
Q 26A hilltop mausoleum above Stuttgart was built by King William I for Queen Catherine, a grand duchess of which country?
Russia
Russia's Catherine Pavlovna, a sister of Tsar Alexander I, died in Stuttgart in January 1819, and her chapel replaced the ruined ancestral castle of the Württemberg dynasty.
Q 27Gaisburger Marsch, a Swabian favourite named after a district of Stuttgart, is what kind of dish?
A beef stew
A beef stew served with potatoes and Spätzle, it is said to owe its name to officer cadets who marched all the way to Gaisburg to eat it.
Q 28Under the Swabian custom of 'Kehrwoche', familiar to anyone renting in Stuttgart, neighbours take turns at which chore?
Cleaning shared areas
Cleaning shared areas such as hallways and paths was a legal duty every Saturday until 1988, and the custom reaches back to the end of the 15th century.
Q 29Which hip hop group from Stuttgart scored the genre's first German chart hit with the 1992 single 'Die da!?!'?
Die Fantastischen Vier
Die Fantastischen Vier, Fanta 4 for short, took the single to number two in Germany and number one in Austria and Switzerland.
Q 30Which airship pioneer was rescued by public donations after his LZ 4 burned at Echterdingen, near Stuttgart, in 1908?
Count Zeppelin
Count Zeppelin received more than six million marks from the German public, which put his airship building on a sound financial footing for the first time.