Western Wall Trivia
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48 free Western Wall trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Western Wall trivia quiz covers the Kotel, the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray, from Herod the Great's expansion of the Temple Mount around 19 BCE to the disputes over egalitarian prayer in the 2020s. The first questions deal with the wall itself: how long it really is, how many of its courses lie underground, where the enormous stones were quarried, and which of them weighs as much as 300 tonnes. It then explains the names: why Christians called it the Wailing Wall, why the Islamic world calls it the Buraq Wall, and who first wrote 'ha-kotel ha-ma'aravi'. The middle of the quiz follows the wall through history: the Roman ban on Jews, the Byzantine empress who let them return, Saladin's son and the Moroccan Quarter, Suleiman's rosewater legend, the Ottoman firmans, Rothschild's plan to buy the quarter, the British Mandate, the 1928 screen incident and the 1929 riots, Jordanian rule and the moment paratroopers reached the stones in June 1967. The last questions cover the plaza, the tunnel and its 1996 riots, Wilson's and Robinson's arches, the million prayer notes a year and what happens to them, papal visits, the Rabbi of the Wall and Women of the Wall. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the Western Wall, its tunnel and plaza and the custom of placing notes.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Western Wall's plaza lies in the Jewish Quarter; most of the wall hides behind houses in which quarter?
Muslim Quarter
The Muslim Quarter's medieval houses were built right along the wall, so only a short stretch of its 488 metres faces the open prayer plaza.
Q 02Which ruler is thought to have begun the wall while expanding the Temple Mount around 19 BCE?
Herod the Great
Herod the Great doubled the size of the Temple Mount, and the wall was built to hold up the enlarged platform, never as part of the Temple itself.
Q 03Israeli troops reached the Western Wall on 7 June 1967, midway through which war?
The Six-Day War
The Six-Day War began on 5 June and the Old City fell two days later; pictures of soldiers weeping at the wall became some of the conflict's defining images.
Q 04Which gold-capped shrine on the Temple Mount rises directly above the Western Wall?
Dome of the Rock
The Dome of the Rock has crowned the Mount since the 690s, and because the wall is part of that compound's boundary, control of the prayer site below has long been disputed.
Q 05The wall's huge blocks are of what kind of stone?
Meleke limestone
Meleke limestone, Jerusalem's 'royal' stone, can be soft enough to cut with a knife when first exposed, then hardens in the air into a durable building block.
Q 06The wall is revered for its closeness to the presumed site of which part of the Temple?
The Holy of Holies
The Holy of Holies stood at the Temple's western end, which is why this wall, of the four around the Mount, is held the holiest.
Q 07Who became the first sitting US president to visit the Western Wall?
Donald Trump
Donald Trump made the visit in May 2017, resting a hand on the stones and slipping a folded note into a crack, as visiting dignitaries have long done.
Q 08The name 'Wailing Wall' has historically been used mainly by whom?
Christians
Christians, mostly European travellers who watched Jews mourn the lost Temple there, coined the name; Hebrew never adopted it, and its speakers simply say the Kotel, 'the wall'.
Q 09In the Islamic world the wall is named after Buraq, who or what was Buraq?
Muhammad's winged steed
Muhammad's winged steed, Buraq, carried him from Mecca to Jerusalem in a single night and is said to have been tethered at the wall while he ascended to heaven.
Q 10After crushing which Jewish revolt in 135 CE did Rome ban Jews from Jerusalem?
The Bar Kokhba revolt
The Bar Kokhba revolt ended in 135 CE with Jews shut out of the city, and later emperors let them return to the Temple ruins on only one day a year, to mourn.
Q 11Which Roman general's triumphal arch shows soldiers carrying off the Temple's menorah after the sack of 70 CE?
Titus
Titus destroyed the Temple in 70 CE, and the menorah carved on his arch in Rome was later copied for the emblem of the State of Israel.
Q 12Whose army destroyed the First Temple, on the hill behind the Western Wall, in 586 BCE?
The Babylonians
The Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar razed the First Temple and deported Judah's people; a second Temple rose on the same spot about seventy years later.
Q 13Which Ottoman sultan is said to have cleared the wall for Jewish prayer?
Suleiman the Magnificent
Q 21The 1930 international commission ruled the wall belonged to whom?
The Muslim waqf
The Muslim waqf was confirmed as sole owner of the wall and the pavement in front of it, even as the commission upheld the Jews' right to come there to pray at all times.
Q 22Which country controlled the Old City from 1948 to 1967, when Jews were barred from the wall?
Jordan
Jordan had signed an armistice in 1949 that promised access to the holy places, yet in nineteen years of its rule no Israeli Jew was allowed to reach the wall.
Q 23By which biblical name is the Temple Mount, the hill behind the wall, also known?
Mount Moriah
Mount Moriah is where tradition places Abraham's binding of Isaac, and that story is why the hill is said to have been chosen as the site for the Temple.
Suleiman the Magnificent, who rebuilt the city walls that still stand, is credited with clearing the wall's foot and recognising the Jews' right to pray there.
Q 14Which family celebration fills the plaza on Monday and Thursday mornings, the weekdays when the Torah is read?
A bar mitzvah
A bar mitzvah: a boy turning thirteen is called up to read from the Torah for the first time, so families choose the weekdays when the scroll is brought out.
Q 15David Rubinger's famous 1967 photograph shows three Israeli soldiers of which kind gazing up at the wall?
Paratroopers
Paratroopers: Rubinger thought little of the shot and preferred another he took minutes later, until his wife told him the one of the three soldiers was better.
Q 16Which Jewish philanthropist tried in 1887 to buy the houses facing the wall and clear them for a plaza?
Baron Rothschild
Baron Rothschild meant to rehouse the residents and open a wide square for worshippers; the Ottoman authorities seemed ready to agree, yet the purchase was never completed.
Q 17Which British general captured Jerusalem in December 1917?
Edmund Allenby
Edmund Allenby got off his horse and walked in through the Jaffa Gate, a deliberate show of respect for a city holy to three faiths.
Q 18On Yom Kippur 1928, British police forcibly removed what from the prayer area?
A screen separating men and women
A screen separating men and women was torn down mid-service because officials saw it as a breach of the rule against building at the wall, and the outcry fed the tension that exploded in the riots of 1929.
Q 19Which song did hundreds of young Zionists sing at the wall while raising their flag in August 1929?
Hatikvah
Hatikvah was sung as some 300 marchers raised the Zionist flag; a far larger counter-demonstration followed the next day, and a week later riots spread across Palestine.
Q 20The August 1929 riots that began at the wall spread within days to a massacre of Jews in which city?
Hebron
Hebron saw 67 Jews killed, and within a few years none of its centuries-old Jewish community remained in the city.
Q 24Which chief army rabbi led the first Jewish prayers at the wall since 1948 on the day it was captured?
Shlomo Goren
Shlomo Goren arrived minutes after the first soldiers, who lifted him onto their shoulders in front of the stones; he later became Israel's Ashkenazi chief rabbi.
Q 25The wall's plaza was created in June 1967 by bulldozing which centuries-old neighbourhood?
The Moroccan Quarter
The Moroccan Quarter, founded for North African pilgrims in the 1190s, stood barely four metres from the wall; its residents were ordered out at night, days after the Old City was taken.
Q 26Wilson's Arch, now a covered prayer hall beside the wall, once supported what?
A bridge
A bridge crossed the valley on this arch from the Upper City on the opposite hill, giving a level road onto the Mount; the arch is named after the British surveyor who recorded it in the 1860s.
Q 27What are the written prayers tucked into the wall's cracks called in Yiddish?
Kvitlach
Kvitlach, 'little notes', began as written petitions handed to Hasidic rebbes; at the wall the custom has grown to more than a million a year, some sent in by fax and email.
Q 28Which Jewish fast day marking the Temples' destruction draws especially large crowds to the wall?
Tisha B'Av
Tisha B'Av brings tens of thousands to the wall, where they gather after dark to chant the Book of Lamentations and dirges for the lost Temples.
Q 29Which biblical king built the First Temple on the hill behind the Western Wall?
King Solomon
King Solomon completed it in the tenth century BCE; his father David had brought the Ark to Jerusalem and picked the site, but the building was left to the son.
Q 30Which British officer, later London's police chief during the Jack the Ripper murders, sank shafts along the wall in 1867?
Charles Warren
Charles Warren's shafts can still be seen under Wilson's Arch, and a sealed ancient entrance to the Temple Mount that he found is now called Warren's Gate.