Tower Bridge
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40 free Tower Bridge trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Tower Bridge is the landmark most people picture when they think of London, and it is younger, stranger and busier than it looks. Behind the castle-like towers is a working Victorian machine that still stops the traffic to let tall masts through. This quiz turns the best Tower Bridge fun facts into questions: who designed it and who finished the job, what the towers are really made of, how the roadway is raised, and the laws that still govern it. It also covers the stunts, protests and near misses, from daredevil pilots to one very quick-thinking driver, plus the landmark's appearances in film, television and royal pageantry. It suits anyone planning a visit, teachers building a London lesson, and quiz hosts who want a round on a single landmark. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave with stories worth repeating.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was Albert Gunter driving when Tower Bridge began to open beneath him, forcing him to jump the gap?
A double-decker bus
A double-decker bus, the number 78, dropped onto the far leaf, which had not yet started to rise. Gunter was given £10 for his quick thinking.
Q 02Robert McCulloch, wrongly said to have thought he was buying Tower Bridge, shipped London Bridge to which US state?
Arizona
Arizona's Lake Havasu City got the 1830s crossing to help sell building plots, and both McCulloch and the official who arranged the sale denied any mix-up.
Q 03One of the lampposts on Tower Bridge is a disguise for what, connected to an old guardroom below?
A chimney
A chimney, painted to match the real lamps, carried smoke up from a fireplace in a guardroom inside one of the piers.
Q 04Which colour was Tower Bridge originally painted, a shade rumoured to be Queen Victoria's favourite?
Chocolate brown
Chocolate brown lasted until the bridge was camouflaged in battleship grey before the Second World War. The original paint can still be seen inside.
Q 05Which US president's motorcade was split in two when Tower Bridge opened for a sailing barge?
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton was returning from lunch with Tony Blair in 1997 when the barge Gladys arrived on schedule and the roadway rose, to the alarm of his security staff.
Q 06Which animals did Freeman of the City Jef Smith drive across Tower Bridge in 1999, claiming an ancient right?
Sheep
Sheep, just two of them, made the crossing as Smith protested that the rights of older citizens were being eroded.
Q 07A Fathers 4 Justice campaigner closed Tower Bridge in 2003 by climbing a nearby crane dressed as which superhero?
Spider-Man
Spider-Man stayed up the crane for six days as part of a fathers' rights protest. Police shut the crossing and nearby roads in case he fell.
Q 08Tower Bridge looks like a stone castle, but its towers are built around a hidden frame of which material?
Steel
Steel, more than 11,000 tons of it, forms the skeleton. The stone cladding was added to protect it and to match the Tower of London.
Q 09By law, what must be hung from Tower Bridge by day when work reduces the headroom beneath it?
A bundle of straw
A bundle of straw warns passing crews that there is less room than normal to squeeze beneath the roadway, and a white light takes over after dark.
Q 10Which fictional spy escorted the Queen in a helicopter flown through Tower Bridge for London's 2012 opening ceremony?
James Bond
James Bond, played by Daniel Craig, collected the Queen from her London home in Danny Boyle's short film Happy and Glorious.
Q 11Robbie Maddison backflipped across the partly raised roadway of Tower Bridge in 2009 while riding what?
A motorbike
A motorbike carried the Australian stuntman over the gap at about 40 mph, with the raised leaves serving as his take-off and landing ramps.
Q 12Which film starring Robert Downey Jr. stages its final fight high on a half-built Tower Bridge?
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes ends with the detective chasing Irene Adler to the top of the unfinished crossing, where he fights the villain Lord Blackwood.
Q 13Which giant symbol was mounted on Tower Bridge in the summer of 2012, before a second emblem replaced it?
The Olympic rings
Q 21Which RAF jet did Alan Pollock fly between the roadway and walkways of Tower Bridge in an unauthorised 1968 protest?
Hawker Hunter
Hawker Hunter pilot Pollock was angry that the RAF's 50th anniversary had no flypast. He was arrested on landing and invalided out without a court martial.
Q 22Frank McClean made the first flight through Tower Bridge in 1912, passing under the walkways in which kind of aircraft?
A seaplane
A seaplane took McClean between the roadway and the walkways, but on the return trip a sidewind tipped him into the river, unhurt.
Q 23Tower Bridge engineer John Wolfe Barry was the son of Charles Barry, the architect best known for which London landmark?
Palace of Westminster
The Olympic rings were taken down once the Games ended, and the emblem of the Paralympics went up in their place.
Q 14Two Austrians leapt from a helicopter in 2024 and flew between the towers of Tower Bridge wearing what?
Wingsuits
Wingsuits took Marco Fürst and Marco Waltenspiel through at up to 246 km/h, a first for the landmark, about 35 metres above the water.
Q 15The central span of Tower Bridge, whose two counterweighted leaves pivot upward, is which type of movable bridge?
Bascule
Bascule comes from a French word for a seesaw or balance, and each leaf is weighted so that little force is needed to raise it.
Q 16Which Victorian architect designed Tower Bridge but died a year into construction and never saw it finished?
Horace Jones
Horace Jones died in 1887, and the brick facing he had planned gave way to the ornate stonework seen today.
Q 17Which future king, then Prince of Wales, officially opened Tower Bridge in June 1894?
Edward VII
Edward VII had laid the foundation stone eight years earlier. The party for the opening was so grand that tidying up afterwards took a whole week.
Q 18Under an 1885 law that still applies, which users of Tower Bridge always have priority over the others?
Ships
Ships can ask for the roadway to be raised at any hour of the day or night, and the same law bars the bridge from charging them.
Q 19Which footballer drove a speedboat carrying the torch beneath Tower Bridge during the London 2012 opening ceremony?
David Beckham
David Beckham steered the craft, named Max Power, as the roadway lifted and fireworks poured from the walkways above.
Q 20Which American sitcom sent two of its characters across Tower Bridge during a two-part London wedding episode?
Friends
Friends shows Joey and Chandler crossing on an open-top bus, in the episode where Joey buys a Union Flag hat from Richard Branson.
The Palace of Westminster, home of the Houses of Parliament, and the bridge bookend central London as the most famous works of father and son.
Q 24The architect of Tower Bridge also designed which London landmark, a filming location for the first Harry Potter film?
Leadenhall Market
Leadenhall Market, with its ornate painted roof, stood in for the streets around the Leaky Cauldron and Diagon Alley.
Q 25Which engineer, famous for London's Victorian sewer system, had a design for Tower Bridge rejected for lack of headroom?
Joseph Bazalgette
Joseph Bazalgette was one of more than fifty entrants, and none of their designs won support until a lifting bridge was proposed in 1884.
Q 26Tower Bridge was designed to resist fierce winds after an 1879 rail bridge collapse over which Scottish river?
Tay
The Tay rail crossing fell in a storm as a train passed over, killing everyone aboard, and later designs had to allow for far stronger winds.
Q 27Sir William Arrol's firm made the metal frame of Tower Bridge in which Scottish city and sent it on by sea?
Glasgow
Glasgow's Arrol company also built the Forth Bridge, and many of its workers moved to London to put the same skills to use.
Q 28The towers of Tower Bridge are faced with Portland stone and which other rock, quarried in Cornwall?
Granite
Granite and pale Portland stone hide the metal skeleton, a facing chosen so that the bridge would sit well beside the Tower of London.
Q 29Before electricity took over in the 1970s, which kind of engine drove the pumps that raised the roadway of Tower Bridge?
Steam
Steam from coal-fired boilers, stoked around the clock, drove pumping engines that are still on show in the engine rooms.
Q 30What was added to the high-level walkways of Tower Bridge in 2014, strong enough to hold two black taxis?
Glass floors
Glass floors let visitors look straight down at the traffic on the roadway and the river far below.