Warsaw Trivia
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48 free Warsaw trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Warsaw trivia quiz covers the Polish capital from a fishing village on the Vistula to the skyscraper city it is today. The easy questions are ones any visitor could answer: the river, the mermaid on the coat of arms, the king who moved the capital from Kraków, the composer whose heart rests in Holy Cross Church, and the giant Stalinist palace on Parade Square. The harder end is for history readers and people who know the city well: the Warsaw Confederation of 1573, the three-day battle against Sweden in 1656, the Miracle on the Vistula in 1920, the Ghetto Uprising and the 63-day Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the reconstruction of the Old Town that UNESCO listed in 1980, the radio mast that was once the tallest structure on Earth, and the tower that is now the tallest building in the European Union. Legia, the metro, Chopin Airport and the Copernicus Science Centre get questions too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the city, its landmarks and its battles before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Poland, Budapest and Prague quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which river does Warsaw stand?
Vistula
Warsaw stands on the Vistula, Poland's longest river, which divides the city into a higher left bank on the moraine plateau and a lower right bank.
Q 02Warsaw is the capital of which voivodeship?
Masovian
Warsaw is the capital of the Masovian Voivodeship, one of the 16 provinces created in the 1999 reform; the city had been the seat of the Dukes of Masovia since 1413.
Q 03Which king moved the Polish capital from Kraków to Warsaw in 1596?
Sigismund III Vasa
Sigismund III Vasa moved the royal court from Kraków to Warsaw in 1596, after a 1595 fire damaged Wawel Castle; Warsaw lay midway between Kraków and Vilnius, the Commonwealth's two capitals.
Q 04What mythical creature appears on Warsaw's coat of arms?
A mermaid
Polish syrenka is a cognate of siren, but she is properly a freshwater mermaid called a melusina.
Q 05Which Warsaw district lies on the east bank of the river?
Praga
Praga is Warsaw's historic district on the river's east bank, facing the Old Town; it kept much of its pre-war tenement housing because it escaped the 1944 destruction of the left bank.
Q 06What is a native of Warsaw called in English?
Varsovian
Varsovian, from the city's Latin name Varsovia, is the English demonym; in Polish a man from the city is a warszawiak or warszawianin and a woman a warszawianka.
Q 07Which queen was accused of poisoning the last Duke of Masovia in 1526?
Bona Sforza
Queen Bona Sforza, Poland's Italian-born queen, was rumoured to have poisoned Janusz III, the last Duke of Masovia, who died in 1526; the duchy and Warsaw then passed to the Polish crown.
Q 08What did the 1573 Warsaw Confederation formally establish in the Commonwealth?
Religious freedom
The Warsaw Confederation, adopted by the convocation sejm in Warsaw on 28 January 1573 during the first interregnum, guaranteed religious freedom to the nobility, a rare act of tolerance in Reformation-era Europe.
Q 09Which two powers beat a larger Polish-Lithuanian army near Warsaw in July 1656?
Sweden and Brandenburg
Sweden and Brandenburg, led by Charles X Gustav and Elector Frederick William, beat John II Casimir's larger Polish-Lithuanian army in the three-day Battle of Warsaw of 28–30 July 1656, a win that gained them little.
Q 10Which power annexed Warsaw in the final partition of Poland in 1795?
Prussia
Warsaw became capital of the province of South Prussia until Napoleon arrived.
Q 11Which exiled French king lived in Warsaw under the alias Comte de Lille?
Louis XVIII
Louis XVIII, the exiled Comte de Provence, lived in Warsaw from 1801 to 1804 under the alias Comte de Lille, a decade before he took the French throne in 1814.
Q 12Which English engineer designed Warsaw's first water and sewer systems?
William Lindley
William Lindley, the English engineer who had built Hamburg's sewers, designed Warsaw's water and sewer systems in the 1870s; his son William Heerlein Lindley directed the construction that followed.
Q 13In the 1897 Imperial Census, Warsaw ranked as which largest city of the Russian Empire?
Third
Only St. Petersburg and Moscow were bigger; the census counted 626,000 residents.
Q 21On what date did the insurgents surrender, ending the Warsaw Uprising?
2 October 1944
The insurgents capitulated on 2 October 1944; the Wola massacre of 5–12 August, in which German units killed some 40,000 or more civilians, had shown what the city faced.
Q 22Roughly what percentage of Warsaw was destroyed by the end of World War II?
85%
About 85% of Warsaw's buildings were destroyed by January 1945; after the Uprising, Hitler ordered the city razed, and German demolition squads levelled block after block despite the capitulation terms.
Q 23Which city became Poland's transitional seat of government while Warsaw lay in ruins?
Łódź
Łódź, largely undamaged in the war, housed much of Poland's government and cultural life in 1945 while Warsaw was being rebuilt; Warsaw nonetheless remained the official capital.
Q 14The 1920 Battle of Warsaw against the Red Army is known by what nickname?
The Miracle on the Vistula
The Miracle on the Vistula was coined ironically by the publicist Stanisław Stroński, who doubted the army's leadership; the phrase stuck as a badge of honour for the August 1920 victory.
Q 15Who commanded the Polish counterattack from the south on 16 August 1920?
Józef Piłsudski
Józef Piłsudski personally led the strike group that attacked from the Wieprz River on 16 August 1920, hitting the Red Army's flank and forcing a disorganised Soviet retreat.
Q 16Roughly what share of Warsaw's population was herded into the Ghetto after 1939?
30%
About 30% of Warsaw's population, over 400,000 Jews, was confined in the ghetto from 1940 in roughly 2.4% of the city's area, before the mass deportations of 1942.
Q 17To which extermination camp were most Warsaw Ghetto Jews deported in 1942?
Treblinka
Most were murdered at Treblinka: at least 254,000 ghetto residents were deported there between 22 July and 21 September 1942 under the pretence of resettlement in the East.
Q 18On what date did the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begin?
19 April 1943
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on 19 April 1943, Passover eve, when SS units under Jürgen Stroop entered the ghetto; the fighters held out until Stroop blew up the Great Synagogue on 16 May.
Q 19How many days did the 1944 Warsaw Uprising last?
63
The Warsaw Uprising lasted 63 days in 1944; the insurgents had expected to hold out only a few days until the nearby Red Army advanced, but Soviet forces halted on the far bank of the river.
Q 20Which Polish underground force led the 1944 Warsaw Uprising?
The Home Army
The Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK), the main Polish underground force loyal to the government-in-exile in London, launched the uprising in August 1944 under General Tadeusz Bór-Komorowski.
Q 24The Palace of Culture and Science was a gift from which country?
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union built the palace in the early 1950s as a 'gift of the Soviet people'; it was originally named after Joseph Stalin, a dedication dropped during destalinisation.
Q 25Which band played the Palace of Culture in 1967 as the first big Western rock act behind the Iron Curtain?
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones played the palace's Congress Hall on 13 April 1967, the first major Western rock concert behind the Iron Curtain; riot police clashed with ticketless fans outside.
Q 26What world record did the Palace of Culture briefly hold from the 2000 millennium celebrations?
World's tallest clock tower
The four clock faces added for the millennium made the palace the world's tallest clock tower; the NTT Docomo Yoyogi Building in Tokyo took that record in 2002.
Q 27In which year did UNESCO list Warsaw's reconstructed Old Town as a World Heritage Site?
1980
UNESCO inscribed Warsaw's Historic Centre in 1980, citing the near-total reconstruction of the Old Town after its 1944 destruction, with Bernardo Bellotto's 18th-century cityscapes used as a guide.
Q 28In which years was Warsaw's Royal Castle rebuilt after its wartime destruction?
1971–1984
The Royal Castle was rebuilt in 1971–1984, funded largely by public donations, nearly two decades after the Old Town had been ceremonially reopened on 22 July 1953.
Q 29What distinction does the 1644 Sigismund landmark on Castle Square hold?
First modern secular column monument
The column, raised in 1644 by Władysław IV for his father, is considered the first modern secular column monument; the bronze king holds a cross in his left hand and a sabre in his right.
Q 30Wilanów Palace was built for which Polish king?
John III Sobieski
Wilanów Palace was built for John III Sobieski between 1677 and 1696 as a summer residence; it survived both world wars largely intact, unlike most of Warsaw's palaces.