Sydney Opera House Trivia
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58 free Sydney Opera House trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Sydney Opera House took sixteen years and fifteen times its budget to build, and its architect never saw it finished. This quiz covers the whole saga: the conductor who insisted on Bennelong Point, the 233-entry competition Eero Saarinen helped judge, the spherical geometry that finally made the sails buildable, the Swedish tiles, the 1966 resignation and 'Malice in Blunderland', Peter Hall's rescue of the interiors, and Queen Elizabeth II's opening in 1973. The building's afterlife is here too: Paul Robeson singing to the construction crew, Prokofiev on opening night, Thin Lizzy on the steps, Arnold Schwarzenegger's last title, Nelson Mandela's crowd of 40,000, the 'No War' paint job, Vivid, the horse-race petition and the 50th birthday. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen a postcard; the hard ones cover granite quarries and the Gadigal name for the point. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Opera House, Jørn Utzon, Bennelong Point and Ove Arup, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. For the city itself, try our Sydney quiz.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Danish architect designed the Sydney Opera House?
Jørn Utzon
Jørn Utzon won the 1957 international design competition for the building; he resigned from the project in February 1966 after disputes with the New South Wales government over payments and design changes.
Q 02Who formally opened the Sydney Opera House on 20 October 1973?
Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II declared the building open on 20 October 1973 from the forecourt; the televised ceremony included fireworks and a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.
Q 03In which year was the original architect re-engaged as the Opera House's design consultant?
1999
The original architect was appointed design consultant to the Opera House in 1999, ending a thirty-three-year estrangement; his design principles, published in 2002, were adopted to guide later changes to the building.
Q 04On which headland of Sydney Harbour does the Opera House stand?
Bennelong Point
Bennelong Point juts into the harbour between Sydney Cove and Farm Cove, beside the Royal Botanic Garden and facing the Harbour Bridge across Circular Quay.
Q 05What is the Opera House site called by the local Gadigal people of the Eora nation?
Dubbagullee
The Gadigal name Dubbagullee, also written Tubowgule, is glossed 'where the knowledge waters meet'; the point began as a small tidal island and was joined to the mainland with fill in the early 1800s.
Q 06The headland is named for an Aboriginal man who persuaded Phillip to build him what there?
A brick hut
A brick hut was built for Woollarawarre Bennelong on the point in 1790 at Governor Arthur Phillip's order; Bennelong, a Wangal man, acted as interpreter and go-between for the British and sailed to England in 1792.
Q 07What building was demolished in 1958 to clear the site for the Opera House?
A tram depot
The Fort Macquarie Tram Depot stood on the footprint of the original 1817 fort.
Q 08Which Sydney Symphony conductor lobbied for the Opera House and its harbourside site?
Eugene Goossens
Eugene Goossens, the Sydney Symphony's chief conductor from 1947, campaigned for a purpose-built opera house and insisted on the harbourside point; the premier had preferred a site near Wynyard station in the city.
Q 09Which New South Wales premier launched the design competition and authorised construction?
Joseph Cahill
Joseph Cahill, Labor premier of New South Wales from 1952 to 1959, announced the competition in 1955 and had construction begin in March 1959, seven months before his death in office.
Q 10How many entries did the 1955–57 international design competition receive?
233
The competition drew 233 entries from architects in 32 countries; the winning scheme, chosen in January 1957, earned its author a prize of 5,000 Australian pounds.
Q 11Which Finnish-American architect on the competition jury championed the winning entry?
Eero Saarinen
Eero Saarinen, who joined the judging late, pressed fellow jurors Henry Ingham Ashworth, Cobden Parkes and Leslie Martin to award first prize to the Danish scheme in January 1957.
Q 12The roof 'shells' are all sections of a sphere of what radius?
75.2 metres
Every shell is cut from a sphere of 75.2 metres radius; that spherical solution, settled on in 1961, let ribs of different lengths be cast in one set of moulds.
Q 13How many precast concrete sections make up the roof?
2,194
The roof's 2,194 precast concrete sections weigh up to 15 tonnes each and are held together by 350 km of tensioned steel cable; the building stands on 588 piers sunk up to 25 metres below sea level.
Q 21The original architect's own 2004 tapestry in the Opera House honours which composer?
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is the subject of the architect's tapestry Homage to C.P.E. Bach, a 14-metre work woven in Melbourne and unveiled in 2004 in the harbourside room named after the architect.
Q 22What was the projected cost of the Opera House when it was first estimated in 1957?
$7 million
$7 million (3.5 million Australian pounds) was the 1957 estimate, with completion promised for Australia Day 1963; the project finished a decade late and many times over budget.
Q 23What did the Opera House ultimately cost by its completion in 1973?
$102 million
Q 14Roughly how many tiles cover the roof shells?
1,056,006
The shells carry 1,056,006 glazed tiles in two finishes, glossy white and matte cream, laid in a chevron pattern that reads as plain white from across the harbour.
Q 15The roof tiles were manufactured in which country?
Sweden
The tiles came from Höganäs in Sweden, a firm that normally made stoneware tiles for the paper-mill industry; developing the 120 mm 'Sydney Tile' took about three years.
Q 16How high above sea level is the highest point of the roof?
67 metres
The tallest shell reaches 67 metres above sea level, roughly the height of a 22-storey building.
Q 17The building's exterior is largely clad in panels of pink granite quarried where?
Tarana
The exterior panels are precast concrete faced with pink granite aggregate quarried at Tarana, in the central west of New South Wales.
Q 18How many seats does the Concert Hall have?
2,679
The Concert Hall seats 2,679 people beneath the building's tallest shell and is home to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; its walls and ceiling are lined in white birch plywood and brush box.
Q 19The Concert Hall's pipe instrument holds what world record?
Largest mechanical tracker-action organ
Largest mechanical tracker-action organ in the world, Ronald Sharp's Grand Organ was completed in 1979 after a decade of work and has more than 10,000 pipes.
Q 20The Opera Theatre was renamed in October 2012 after which famous Australian soprano?
Joan Sutherland
The renaming honoured Joan Sutherland, the coloratura soprano nicknamed 'La Stupenda', who died in October 2010; the theatre is the Sydney home of Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet.
$102 million was the final cost when the building opened in 1973; by October 1966, months after the architect's resignation, only $22.9 million had been spent, with the interiors yet to be built.
Q 24Which firm built the roof shells and made the 2,400 precast ribs in an on-site factory?
Hornibrook
Hornibrook cast the ribs in a factory on the site, and its engineer Joe Bertony devised the adjustable steel erection arch that held each rib in place until a shell was complete.
Q 25Which engineering firm monitored construction and solved the structural puzzle of the shells?
Ove Arup & Partners
Ove Arup & Partners engineered the shells; the firm's structural analysis was among the earliest to rely on computers, and its collaboration with the architect produced the spherical geometry adopted in 1961.
Q 26The 1965 election of which premier's government led to the architect's resignation a year later?
Robert Askin
Askin had been a vocal critic of the project before taking office, and his works minister withheld the architect's fees.
Q 27Which Minister for Public Works accepted the architect's resignation in 1966?
Davis Hughes
Davis Hughes, the Country Party works minister, stopped paying the architect's fees in 1965 and accepted his letter of resignation in February 1966; the architect cited withheld payments and a lack of collaboration.
Q 28Which Australian architect took over the design role and finished the interiors after 1966?
Peter Hall
Peter Hall led the team, with Lionel Todd and David Littlemore, that completed the interiors; he concluded the major hall could not serve both concerts and opera and made it a concert hall.
Q 29Who was the first person to perform at the Opera House, singing to construction workers at lunch in 1960?
Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson, the American bass-baritone and activist, climbed the scaffolding in 1960 and sang 'Ol' Man River' to the construction workers during their lunch break.
Q 30Which opera was the first performed in the Opera Theatre, on 28 September 1973?
Prokofiev's War and Peace
Prokofiev's War and Peace opened the Opera Theatre on 28 September 1973, performed by the Australian Opera with Edward Downes conducting and Sam Wanamaker, later founder of Shakespeare's Globe, directing.