Washington DC
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89 free Washington DC trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
20 free Washington DC trivia questions with answers. Think you know everything about America's capital? Test your Washington DC knowledge with our comprehensive 89-question trivia quiz covering landmarks, history, government, and fascinating facts about the nation's capital. Whether you're a DC resident, history buff, or just curious about American government, this quiz will challenge what you know about Washington DC.
30 of 89 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01All the land in present-day Washington, D.C. was originally given by which state?
Maryland
Maryland: Virginia gave land too, but its share across the river was handed back in 1846, so today's district sits entirely on former Maryland soil.
Q 02Which National Mall landmark stayed closed for nearly three years after a 2011 earthquake?
Washington Monument
The Washington Monument took more than 150 cracks in the magnitude 5.8 quake of August 2011, and climbers roped down its faces to inspect the damage before it reopened in May 2014.
Q 03Whom did George Washington commission in 1791 to lay out the new federal city?
Pierre Charles L'Enfant
Pierre Charles L'Enfant, a French-born military engineer, drew the 1791 plan of grand avenues and ceremonial spaces; Andrew Ellicott finished the survey after L'Enfant was dismissed in 1792.
Q 04In the Compromise of 1790, who backed a Potomac capital in return for federal takeover of state debts?
Alexander Hamilton
Alexander Hamilton won Southern votes for his debt plan by backing the Potomac site, a deal Jefferson said was struck over dinner at his house; the Residence Act followed in July 1790.
Q 05Which highway ringing Washington gives its name to a phrase for the capital's political insiders?
The Beltway
The Beltway lends its name to 'inside the Beltway', yet the road runs almost wholly outside the city: only a short stretch of one bridge crosses a tip of the District.
Q 06What do the letters NW, NE, SW or SE at the end of a Washington street address show?
The quadrant of the city
The quadrant of the city: all four meet at a marble star in the floor beneath the Capitol dome, so the same street address can exist four times over.
Q 07What type of animal is Screech, the official mascot of the Washington Nationals baseball team?
Eagle
Screech is a bald eagle, 'hatched' at RFK Stadium on Kids Opening Day in April 2005, the Nationals' first season in Washington.
Q 08Washington's highest natural point was picked in the Civil War as the site of what?
A fort
A fort: Fort Reno went up in 1861 on the District's highest ground, and in July 1864 its lookouts were the first to spot Jubal Early's Confederates marching on the capital.
Q 09Which 1973 horror film made a steep outdoor staircase in Georgetown a tourist stop?
The Exorcist
The Exorcist crew padded the steps with half-inch rubber for the fatal fall and built a false front beside them, because the real house stood too far back.
Q 10The Tidal Basin in Washington D.C. is ringed by what flowering trees?
Cherry Blossom
Cherry blossom trees came as a 1912 gift from Japan, and in 1938 a group of women chained themselves together beside them to stop workmen clearing some for the Jefferson Memorial.
Q 11Which Washington building got its present official name from Theodore Roosevelt in 1901?
The White House
The White House was only a popular nickname until then: earlier official papers called it the President's Palace, the President's House or the Executive Mansion.
Q 12Which institution, founded in 1800 as the oldest federal cultural body, fills three buildings next to the Capitol?
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress lost its first collection when the British burned the Capitol in 1814, so Congress restocked it by buying Thomas Jefferson's 6,487 books.
Q 13The J. Edgar Hoover Building opened in 1975 as the headquarters of which agency?
Q 21Wheaton station on Washington's Metro holds the Western Hemisphere record for the longest single-span what?
Escalator
Escalator: Wheaton's run 230 feet in a single flight, yet the station is not Metro's deepest, because the next stop down the line lies deeper still.
Q 22Washington Metro's vaulted stations are a showpiece of which architectural style?
Brutalism
Brutalism, the style of exposed concrete, came to Metro through Chicago architect Harry Weese, whose common kit of parts went on to guide the design of stations built long after his own.
Q 23The obelisk on the Mall was the world's tallest structure until what overtook it in 1889?
Eiffel Tower
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) got a home its namesake never used: Hoover died in May 1972, and the building bearing his name was not finished until 1975.
Q 14At which Washington theatre did John Wilkes Booth shoot President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865?
Ford's Theatre
Ford's Theatre on 10th Street NW was the scene; Booth shot Lincoln during a performance of Our American Cousin, and the president died the next morning at the Petersen House across the street.
Q 15What is the professional NBA team based in Washington D.C.?
Washington Wizards
The Washington Wizards were the Bullets until 1997: owner Abe Pollin dropped the old name because of its violent overtones in a city with a high murder rate.
Q 16Which movie villain is carved as a grotesque high on a tower of Washington National Cathedral?
Darth Vader
Darth Vader got there through a 1980s children's design contest run by National Geographic World: a boy's drawing of the Star Wars villain placed third and was carved for the northwest tower.
Q 17Which document joins the Declaration and the Constitution as the third Charter of Freedom in the National Archives Rotunda?
Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights was joined there in December 1952 by the other two charters, which crossed the city in an armored Marine carrier with a tank escort so all three could be shown together for the first time.
Q 18What name did the commissioners give the federal district in 1791, before it was Washington, D.C.?
The Territory of Columbia
The Territory of Columbia was the name the three commissioners chose in September 1791, when Columbia was a poetic name for the United States; the city inside it became the City of Washington.
Q 19Which river flows through eastern Washington into the Potomac and is named for an Indigenous people?
Anacostia
The Anacostia takes its name from the Nacotchtank, whose trading town stood on its banks when John Smith explored the area in 1608; within decades, disease and war had driven most of them away.
Q 20Washington's Metro lines are named for what?
Colors
Colors: Red came first, opening in 1976 with free rides on day one, and Silver, the sixth line, followed in 2014.
The Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 Paris World's Fair, rose to nearly twice the height of the 555-foot obelisk, which had held the record for only five years.
Q 24A small pyramid of which metal caps the apex of the obelisk on the Mall?
Aluminum
The apex is a 100-ounce pyramid of aluminum, set in December 1884 when the metal was still a costly rarity; the capstone carries inscriptions on all four sides.
Q 25Which nativist party destroyed the Pope's Stone donated to the obelisk in 1854?
Know-Nothings
Members of the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings stole and smashed the Pope's Stone in March 1854; a replacement was finally installed in 1982, inscribed 'A Roma Americae'.
Q 26Why does the obelisk on the Mall change shade partway up?
A building halt
A building halt is to blame: money ran out in 1854, and when work resumed more than 20 years later the marble came from a different quarry, which has weathered to another shade.
Q 27Who designed the seated marble statue of Lincoln inside his memorial?
Daniel Chester French
Daniel Chester French designed the seated Lincoln; the Piccirilli brothers carved it from Georgia marble, and the figure was enlarged from a planned 10 feet to 19 feet to suit the chamber.
Q 28Which contralto sang from the Lincoln Memorial steps on Easter 1939 after the DAR barred her?
Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson sang to 75,000 people on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused her Constitution Hall; Interior Secretary Harold Ickes arranged the open-air concert.
Q 29The Jefferson Memorial is modeled on which ancient Roman building?
The Pantheon
The Pantheon was a model Jefferson himself loved: he had already borrowed it for his Rotunda at the University of Virginia, which architect John Russell Pope echoed here.
Q 30Which institution, funded by a British scientist who never visited America, runs the National Air and Space Museum?
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution exists by a twist of fate: James Smithson left his fortune to a nephew, and it passed to the United States only because the nephew died childless in 1835.