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50 free World Cities trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Cities are where the best trivia hides. A capital can change its name three times in a century, ban chewing gum, bar its own citizens from its casino, or start a pyramid-shaped hotel and never finish it. The facts that stick are rarely the ones on the postcard. These 50 questions roam every continent: the former names that still turn up on old maps, the nicknames locals actually use, the rivers and confluences cities grew up on, the ports and bridges that hold world records, the Olympic and Expo hosts, and the oddities of planning and architecture that make one city unlike any other. Every stem carries a clue you can reason from, and every answer comes with a one-line explanation that adds something new. Play it on your phone, print it for a quiz night, or use it to settle an argument about which city really is the oldest, widest or best connected.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which country's Monte Carlo casino forbids its own citizens from entering the gaming rooms?
Monaco
Monaco's ban on Monégasques gambling or working at the casino was the idea of Princess Caroline, who amended the rules on moral grounds; the casino long funded the House of Grimaldi.
Q 02Which city has banned the sale of chewing gum since 1992, with a 2004 exception for therapeutic gum?
Singapore
Singapore outlawed gum sales in January 1992 under its new prime minister Goh Chok Tong; since 2004, dental and nicotine gum can be bought from a doctor or pharmacist.
Q 03Which city's name means 'fragrant harbour', possibly from the incense factories that once lined its coast?
Hong Kong
Hong Kong translates as 'fragrant harbour' or 'incense harbour', a name that may also recall the sweet freshwater the Pearl River once pushed into the bay.
Q 04Which capital's Red Square owes its name to an archaic word meaning 'beautiful', not to the colour?
Moscow
Moscow's Red Square was first recorded under its krasnaya name in 1661–62, when the Russian word still meant 'beautiful' rather than 'red'.
Q 05Which Russian city, Petrograd from 1914 and Leningrad from 1924, voted in 1991 to restore its original name?
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg got its name back in a June 1991 referendum, months before the Soviet Union dissolved; Tsar Nicholas II had dropped the German-sounding original in 1914.
Q 06Which capital stretches across fourteen islands where Lake Mälaren flows into the Baltic Sea?
Stockholm
Stockholm's fourteen central islands run straight on into the island chain of the Stockholm archipelago, and its Old Town, Gamla Stan, grew on the central island from the mid-13th century.
Q 07Which city's MOSE flood barriers, first raised against a high tide in October 2020, seal its lagoon from the Adriatic?
Venice
Venice first activated MOSE on 3 October 2020, keeping Piazza San Marco dry; the mobile gates lie on the seafloor at three inlets and rise for tides forecast above 1.30 metres.
Q 08Which capital's Atomium, an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times, was built for the 1958 World's Fair?
Brussels
Brussels built the Atomium for Expo 58 and never took it down: its nine stainless-steel spheres stand 102 metres tall, among the tallest structures in Belgium.
Q 09Which capital's bronze statue of Hans Christian Andersen's Little Mermaid has drawn tourists since 1913?
Copenhagen
Copenhagen's Little Mermaid, by sculptor Edvard Eriksen, has been decapitated by vandals more than once; in 1998 the head came back anonymously to a television station.
Q 10Which city's sail-shaped Burj Al Arab hotel stands on an artificial island 280 metres off Jumeirah Beach?
Dubai
Dubai's Burj Al Arab opened on 1 December 1999 with an outline modelled on the sail of a dhow; its management says it never called itself a 'seven-star' hotel.
Q 11Which Brazilian city's official song, 'Cidade Maravilhosa' by André Filho, gives it the nickname Marvelous City?
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro's anthem 'Cidade Maravilhosa' means 'marvelous city', and the city also holds Tijuca National Park, described as the world's first urban forest.
Q 12Seoul's Gangnam district, whose name literally means 'south of the river', lies south of which river?
Han
The Han runs about 1.2 kilometres wide through Seoul, an unusually broad river to split a major metropolis, and Gangnam's name simply means 'south of the Han'.
Q 13Which south Indian state capital, home to the Marina Beach seafront, officially dropped the name Madras in 1996?
Chennai
Q 21Which German port city's rivers and canals are crossed by some 2,500 bridges, more than any other city in Europe?
Hamburg
Hamburg claims more bridges inside its city limits than any other city in the world, and it also has five of the world's 29 churches taller than 100 metres.
Q 22Which city only finished paying off the debt from its 1976 Summer Olympics in December 2006?
Montreal
Montreal's mayor Jean Drapeau had declared that 'the Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby', before the bill reached a billion dollars.
Q 23Which Brazilian city's 2007 Clean City Law led advertisers to strip some 15,000 billboards from its streets?
São Paulo
Chennai took its present name on 17 July 1996, part of a nationwide move to shed anglicised names; the city began in 1639 with an East India Company grant around the village of Madrasapattinam.
Q 14Which Gulf capital opened an outpost of the Louvre beneath a 7,000-tonne dome in November 2017?
Abu Dhabi
Louvre Abu Dhabi was inaugurated on 8 November 2017 by Emmanuel Macron and Mohammed bin Zayed, with Jean Nouvel, architect of Paris's Arab World Institute, designing its dome.
Q 15Which city's 25 de Abril suspension bridge, inaugurated in 1966, is painted the same orange as the Golden Gate?
Lisbon
Lisbon's bridge opened on 6 August 1966 as the Salazar Bridge, after the dictator who ordered it, and was finished six months ahead of schedule by the builders of the Bay Bridge.
Q 16Which Dutch city's seaport, the largest in Europe, is also the biggest anywhere outside Asia?
Rotterdam
Rotterdam's port serves a hinterland of more than 500 million consumers across Europe and ranked as the world's tenth-largest container port in 2020.
Q 17Which river does Dublin's cast-iron Ha'penny Bridge, which charged walkers a toll for a century, cross?
Liffey
The Liffey's Ha'penny Bridge opened in May 1816 to replace seven ferries, and its builder William Walsh kept the right to a halfpenny toll for 100 years.
Q 18Which capital's historic core, nicknamed the Square Mile, is a separate city with its own Lord Mayor?
London
London's Square Mile, the City of London, covers just 2.9 square kilometres, which makes it the smallest city in the United Kingdom by area.
Q 19Which Russian city, Stalingrad from 1925 to 1961, was renamed for its river during de-Stalinization?
Volgograd
Volgograd took its present name in 1961 under Khrushchev, having been Tsaritsyn until 1925; the 1942–43 battle fought there is widely held to be the turning point of World War II.
Q 20Which Italian city's Gothic cathedral was begun in 1386, yet its last portal was only inaugurated in 1965?
Milan
Milan Cathedral, the Duomo, took nearly six centuries to finish; Archbishop Antonio da Saluzzo started it in 1386 and the final portal opened on 6 January 1965.
São Paulo's anti-billboard law targeted both advertising and commerce, and the authorities dismantled more than 1,600 signs and 1,300 towering metal panels as well.
Q 24Which Bolivian city's Mi Teleférico, opened in 2014, grew into the longest aerial cable-car system in the world?
La Paz
La Paz and El Alto sit about 400 metres apart in altitude, and Mi Teleférico's first line opened on 30 May 2014 to replace the winding, congested roads between them.
Q 25Which capital, renamed Philadelphia by Ptolemy II in the 3rd century BC, regained its older name under the caliphs?
Amman
Amman's Greek name lasted nearly a thousand years until the Rashidun Caliphate restored the older Ammonite name in the 7th century.
Q 26Which capital's Ryugyong Hotel, a 330-metre pyramid begun in 1987, was halted in 1992 and left a windowless shell?
Pyongyang
Pyongyang's Ryugyong Hotel was halted in 1992 as North Korea's economy collapsed after the Soviet Union fell, and sat for over a decade as a windowless concrete shell.
Q 27Which Indian city's dabbawalas move up to 200,000 home-cooked lunchboxes a day by bicycle and suburban train?
Mumbai
Mumbai's lunch trade began in 1890 when Mahadeo Havaji Bachche started out with about a hundred men; the famous 'one error in six million' figure was only ever an estimate, not a study.
Q 28Which capital's Sobrino de Botín, founded in 1725, is listed by Guinness as the world's oldest restaurant?
Madrid
Madrid's Botín is said to have been opened by the French cook Jean Botín and his Asturian wife, and it has served continuously ever since, a run of three centuries.
Q 29Which capital's Schönbrunn Zoo, opened as an imperial menagerie in 1752, is the oldest zoo still operating?
Vienna
Vienna's Schönbrunn Zoo was the idea of Francis Stephen of Lorraine, husband of Empress Maria Theresa, and it opened to guests in the grounds of the Habsburg summer residence.
Q 30Which city, the most populous in South Africa, was built on neither a river nor a harbour?
Johannesburg
Johannesburg grew on the Witwatersrand ridge, whose streams feed two of southern Africa's great rivers, the Limpopo and the Orange, instead of any river flowing through the city.