50 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which river does Warsaw stand?
Vistula
The river divides the city into a left bank on the moraine plateau and a lower right bank.
Q 02Warsaw is the capital of which voivodeship?
Masovian
Warsaw was made capital of the Duchy of Masovia in 1413, long before it was capital of Poland.
Q 03Which king moved the Polish capital from Kraków to Warsaw in 1596?
Sigismund III Vasa
Warsaw sat conveniently between Kraków and Vilnius, the capitals of the Commonwealth's two halves.
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 05In folk legend, which fisherman fell in love with Sawa, a creature of the river?
Wars
The two names combine into Warszawa, though scholars think the name really derives from a personal name, Warsz.
Q 06What is a native of Warsaw called in English?
Varsovian
In Polish the words are warszawiak or warszawianin for a man and warszawianka for a woman.
Q 07Which queen was accused of poisoning the last Duke of Masovia in 1526?
Bona Sforza
With the ducal line extinct, Masovia and Warsaw were absorbed into the Kingdom of Poland.
Q 08What did the 1573 Warsaw Confederation formally establish in the Commonwealth?
Religious freedom
It was promulgated in Kraków during the first interregnum, as nobles prepared to elect a new king.
Q 09Which two powers beat a larger Polish-Lithuanian army near Warsaw in July 1656?
Sweden and Brandenburg
Superior infantry and artillery fire won the three-day battle, though the win achieved little in the long run.
Q 10Which nickname did Warsaw earn under Stanisław August Poniatowski?
Paris of the North
He remodelled the Royal Castle interior, expanded the Royal Baths Park and founded the first state theatre.
Q 11Which 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 12Which exiled French king lived in Warsaw under the alias Comte de Lille?
Louis XVIII
He would take the French throne in 1814 after Napoleon's fall.
Q 13Which English engineer designed Warsaw's first water and sewer systems?
William Lindley
His son William Heerlein Lindley worked on the project too, during the mayoralty of Sokrates Starynkiewicz.
In the 1897 Imperial Census, Warsaw ranked as which largest city of the Russian Empire?
Q 21Which Polish underground force led the 1944 Warsaw Uprising?
The Home Army
Its Polish name is Armia Krajowa, usually shortened to AK.
Q 22On what date did the insurgents surrender, ending the Warsaw Uprising?
2 October 1944
By then a German counterattack in late August had killed as many as 40,000 civilians in a single operation.
Q 23Roughly what percentage of Warsaw was destroyed by the end of World War II?
85%
Hitler ordered the whole city razed after the Uprising, ignoring the terms of the capitulation.
Third
Only St. Petersburg and Moscow were bigger; the census counted 626,000 residents.
Q 15The 1920 Battle of Warsaw against the Red Army is known by what nickname?
The Miracle on the Vistula
The phrase was coined by a Sejm deputy to mock Piłsudski, but it stuck as a badge of honour.
Q 16Who commanded the Polish counterattack from the south on 16 August 1920?
Józef Piłsudski
The counterattack forced the Russians into a disorganised retreat behind the Neman River.
Q 17Roughly what share of Warsaw's population was herded into the Ghetto after 1939?
30%
Several hundred thousand people were confined there before the deportations of 1942.
Q 18To which extermination camp were most Warsaw Ghetto Jews deported in 1942?
Treblinka
At least 254,000 people were sent there in the summer of 1942 under the guise of resettlement in the East.
Q 19On what date did the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begin?
19 April 1943
Outgunned fighters held out for almost a month against SS commander Jürgen Stroop's block-by-block destruction.
Q 20How many days did the 1944 Warsaw Uprising last?
63
It was planned to last 48 hours until the Red Army arrived; the Red Army did not come.
Q 24Which city became Poland's transitional seat of government while Warsaw lay in ruins?
Łódź
Warsaw nonetheless officially resumed its role as capital.
Q 25The Palace of Culture and Science was a gift from which country?
Soviet Union
It was originally named after Joseph Stalin, a dedication revoked during destalinisation.
Q 26Which New York landmark is the Palace of Culture and Science said to resemble?
Empire State Building
At 237 metres it was the eighth tallest building in the world when finished.
Q 27Which band played the Palace of Culture in 1967 as the first big Western rock act behind the Iron Curtain?
The Rolling Stones
The palace's Congress Hall seats about 3,000 people.
Q 28What record did the Palace of Culture briefly hold from 2000 after four dials were added?
World's tallest clock tower
A clock on Tokyo's NTT Docomo Yoyogi Building took the record in 2002.
Q 29In which year did UNESCO list Warsaw's reconstructed Old Town as a World Heritage Site?
1980
It was the world's first attempt to resurrect an entire historic city core.
Q 30In which years was Warsaw's Royal Castle rebuilt after its wartime destruction?
1971–1984
The Old Town itself had been reinaugurated on 22 July 1953, but the castle waited nearly two more decades.