Wonders of the World
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50 free Wonders of the World trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
People have been listing the wonders of the world for more than two thousand years. Ancient Greek writers picked seven sights every traveller should see, and the habit stuck: there are now lists of new wonders, natural wonders and engineering wonders, plus a long roll of monuments that never made a list but draw millions of visitors anyway. This quiz covers all of them. Expect questions on the classical seven, the winners of the 2007 worldwide vote, and popular landmarks such as the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Christ the Redeemer and the Sydney Opera House, along with a few natural spectacles like the Grand Canyon. You will be asked who built them, where they stand, what they are made of and which stories about them are true. It suits pub quiz hosts, teachers, travellers and anyone who likes knowing the tale behind a postcard view. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish with a few facts worth repeating.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is both the oldest and the only one still standing?
Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza was the tallest human-made structure on Earth for more than 3,700 years. The other six wonders have all been destroyed.
Q 02Gustave Eiffel, the engineer of the Paris tower, designed the hidden iron skeleton of which monument?
Statue of Liberty
The Statue of Liberty wears a copper skin only about 2.4 mm thick that carries no load. It hangs on Eiffel's interior framework, one of the earliest examples of curtain wall construction.
Q 03Which word comes from the name of a ruler buried at Halicarnassus in a Wonder of the Ancient World?
Mausoleum
Mausoleum comes from Mausolus, who governed Caria for the Persian kings and was entombed around 350 BC. His tomb was the last of the six lost wonders to fall, wrecked by medieval earthquakes.
Q 04Which city in Jordan, carved into rose-coloured sandstone cliffs, was once the capital of the Nabataean Kingdom?
Petra
Petra stayed unknown to the Western world until 1812, when the Swiss traveller Johann Burckhardt rediscovered it. It is now one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.
Q 05Which prehistoric monument on Salisbury Plain has bluestones hauled 150 miles from the Preseli Hills of Wales?
Stonehenge
Stonehenge holds one stone from even farther away: research published in 2024 traced its partly buried Altar Stone to north-east Scotland, some 700 km to the north.
Q 06Which Mughal emperor commissioned the Taj Mahal in Agra to hold the tomb of his wife Mumtaz Mahal?
Shah Jahan
Shah Jahan put more than 20,000 workers and artisans on the project after Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to their 14th child. He now lies in the Taj Mahal beside her.
Q 07The moai, more than 900 giant stone figures carved by the Rapa Nui people, stand on which Chilean territory?
Easter Island
Easter Island's carvers are now thought to have "walked" the upright figures across the land, rocking them from side to side with ropes.
Q 08Big Ben, a name often given to the whole clock tower at Westminster, is strictly the nickname of what?
The great bell
The great bell weighs about 13.5 tons and cracked within months of first chiming in 1859. The tower around it was renamed Elizabeth Tower in 2012.
Q 09Which Roman arena, completed under Emperor Titus in AD 80, is also known as the Flavian Amphitheatre?
Colosseum
The Colosseum is the largest ancient amphitheatre ever built, and it briefly staged mock sea battles as well as gladiator fights and animal hunts.
Q 10Which Inca citadel high in the Andes was brought to international attention by Hiram Bingham in 1911?
Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu is believed to have been built around 1450 as an estate for the Inca emperor Pachacuti. It was abandoned roughly a century later.
Q 11The Hanging Gardens, the only ancient wonder whose location is unproven, were said to stand in which city?
Babylon
Babylon's king Nebuchadnezzar II left long inscriptions about his building works, yet none mentions a garden. One Oxford scholar argues the gardens really grew at Nineveh.
Q 12The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, made by the sculptor Phidias, was faced with ivory and which other material?
Gold
Gold panels and ivory plates were fixed to a wooden frame, and the seated god was kept coated in olive oil to protect the ivory from the marshy air of Olympia.
Q 13The Colossus of Rhodes, toppled by an earthquake after standing just 54 years, was a statue of which Greek god?
Helios
Helios, the sun god, was the patron of Rhodes. The islanders paid for his 33-metre bronze figure by selling the siege equipment a defeated enemy had left behind.
Q 21Which temple complex, built for the Khmer king Suryavarman II, appears on the national flag of Cambodia?
Angkor Wat
Angkor Wat began as a Hindu temple to Vishnu and was gradually turned into a Buddhist one. It is the largest religious complex in the world.
Q 22Which Istanbul landmark, completed under Emperor Justinian in 537, has been both a cathedral and a mosque?
Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia enclosed the world's largest interior space when it was finished. It was a cathedral until 1453, then a mosque, a museum from 1935 and a mosque again from 2020.
Q 23Which scientist is said to have dropped two cannonballs of different masses from the Leaning Tower of Pisa?
Galileo Galilei
Q 14The Temple of Artemis, burned in 356 BC by an arsonist said to be seeking fame, stood in which ancient city?
Ephesus
Ephesus turned down Alexander the Great's offer to pay for a new temple, tactfully replying that one god should not build a temple to another. Its people rebuilt it at their own expense.
Q 15The Lighthouse of Alexandria stood on which island, whose name gave French and Italian their words for lighthouse?
Pharos
Pharos became phare in French and faro in Italian and Spanish. The tower, thought to have stood at least 100 metres tall, was wrecked by earthquakes between 956 and 1303.
Q 16Christ the Redeemer has looked over Rio de Janeiro since 1931 from the summit of which granite peak?
Corcovado
Corcovado rises about 700 metres inside a forested national park. The figure on top is reinforced concrete with outer layers of soapstone, chosen because it lasts and is easy to work.
Q 17Which Maya city in Mexico's Yucatán draws equinox crowds to watch a serpent of shadow crawl down El Castillo?
Chichen Itza
Chichen Itza built El Castillo as a temple to the feathered serpent Kukulcán. Around each equinox the late sun throws triangular shadows that seem to slither down its north staircase.
Q 18The best-known sections of the Great Wall of China, such as Badaling, were built under which dynasty?
Ming
Ming rulers built the best-known sections between 1368 and 1644. The idea that those walls are the first emperor's work from the 3rd century BC is an old European mistake.
Q 19The Terracotta Army near Xi'an was found in 1974 when local farmers were doing which everyday job?
Digging a well
Digging a well about 1.5 km from the first emperor's tomb mound, the farmers struck pits now estimated to hold more than 8,000 clay soldiers.
Q 20The Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 world's fair in Paris, took the world height record from which US landmark?
Washington Monument
The Washington Monument was passed while the tower was still under construction. Eiffel's creation then kept the title of tallest structure for 41 years, until a New York skyscraper took it.
Galileo Galilei lived in Pisa at the time, but the tale rests on a biography his pupil Viviani wrote in 1654. The tower had begun to lean during construction because of soft ground.
Q 24Which Danish architect won the contest to design the Sydney Opera House, then quit and never saw it finished?
Jørn Utzon
Jørn Utzon resigned in 1966 amid cost and schedule overruns and left Australia, never to return. His design had been chosen in 1957 from 233 entries sent in from 32 countries.
Q 25The Elgin Marbles, about half the surviving Parthenon sculptures, are held in which London institution?
British Museum
The British Museum received the sculptures after Lord Elgin, whose agents took them from Athens between 1801 and 1812, sold them to the government. Greece has long argued for their return.
Q 26Which president is the most recent of the four whose 60-foot heads are carved on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt was chosen to stand for the nation's development, beside three predecessors picked for its foundation, expansion and preservation. Carving ran from 1927 to 1941.
Q 27Which architect, buried in the crypt of Barcelona's Sagrada Família, devoted the rest of his life to the church?
Antoni Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí took over in 1883 after the first architect resigned, and changed the design radically. The church's central tower reached its full height only in 2026, a century after his death.
Q 28Which Gulf city is home to the Burj Khalifa, the skyscraper that opened in 2010 at a height of 828 metres?
Dubai
Dubai planned to name the tower after itself, but renamed it at the opening for the ruler of Abu Dhabi, whose emirate had lent the city billions to pay its debts.
Q 29Before the Golden Gate Bridge was painted International Orange, the US Navy suggested which stripes?
Black and yellow
Black and yellow stripes would have made the bridge easier for passing ships to see, the Navy argued. Architect Irving Morrow's orange vermilion won out instead.
Q 30Which Spanish city is home to the Alhambra, the palace-fortress begun in 1238 by the first Nasrid emir?
Granada
Granada's hilltop palace takes its name from the Arabic for "the red one", after its reddish rammed-earth walls. Columbus received royal backing for his voyage there.