World Cities Trivia
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6correct to beat the crowd
100 free World Cities trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 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 100 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 100 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 acted after vandals stuck gum on the door sensors of its new metro trains and stalled them; the 2004 exception for dental and nicotine gum came out of a free-trade deal with the United States.
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 main square takes its name from an old word for 'beautiful' that now means a colour?
Moscow
Moscow's Red Square was earlier known as Pozhar, 'the burnt-out place', after fire cleared the site; krasnaya still meant 'beautiful' when Tsar Alexei made it the whole square's name in the 17th century.
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 first appears in 1252, in letters from the ruler Birger Jarl, as a town on the small island now called Gamla Stan; under him it grew so fast that it soon eclipsed Sweden's older towns.
Q 07Which Adriatic city first raised its MOSE flood barriers against a high tide in October 2020?
Venice
Venice named MOSE with a nod to Moses parting the Red Sea; begun in 2003 and years behind schedule, the gates first kept Piazza San Marco dry on 3 October 2020.
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 shares its nickname, the Marvelous City, with its official anthem, a 1935 Carnival march?
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro was dubbed the Cidade Maravilhosa by the writer Coelho Neto before André Filho borrowed the phrase for his march, a hit for Aurora Miranda whose lyrics never mention Rio by name.
Q 12Seoul's Gangnam district, whose name literally means 'south of the river', lies south of which river?
Han
The Han's south bank was a little-developed fringe of Seoul until the 1970s, when the city pushed its growth across the river; Gangnam, a district only since 1975, is now among the richest parts of the city.
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 has more than five times as many bridges as Venice, because rivers, streams and a web of canals run right through its heart.
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 Clean City Law, passed in 2006, led advertisers to strip thousands of billboards from its streets?
São Paulo
São Paulo's bare streets, a local reporter found, exposed shantytowns that the billboards had long hidden from view.
Chennai may have dropped the name, but it celebrates Madras Day every 22 August, the date traditionally given for its 1639 founding, when the East India Company acquired the site of its fort.
Q 14Which Gulf capital opened an outpost of the Louvre beneath a vast latticed dome in November 2017?
Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi agreed in 2007 to pay France €400 million simply for the use of the Louvre name; architect Jean Nouvel's dome filters the desert sun into a dappled 'rain of light'.
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 was the world's busiest port for four decades, from 1962 until Asian rivals overtook it in 2004; its docks now stretch for some 40 kilometres.
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 began as the Roman settlement of Londinium in the 1st century AD, and its Lord Mayor is a separate office from the Mayor of London, who governs the whole capital.
Q 19Which Russian city, Stalingrad from 1925 to 1961, was renamed for its river during de-Stalinization?
Volgograd
Volgograd's council voted in 2013 to call it 'Hero City Stalingrad' again on set commemorative dates each year; before Stalin it was Tsaritsyn.
Q 20Which Italian city's Gothic cathedral was begun in 1386, yet its last portal was only inaugurated in 1965?
Milan
Milan's Duomo owes its façade to Napoleon, who ordered it finished in 1805 before his coronation there as King of Italy and promised that France would foot the bill, which was never paid.
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 was Ptolemy II's own: he was Philadelphus, 'sibling-lover', and named the city after himself; the Arab conquerors of the 7th century brought back the far older name of the Ammonites.
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, said to date from 1725, is listed by Guinness as the world's oldest restaurant?
Madrid
Madrid's Botín is said to have been opened by a French cook, Jean Botín, and passed to a nephew, the sobrino of its name.
Q 29Which capital's Schönbrunn Zoo, opened as an imperial menagerie in 1752, is the oldest zoo still operating?
Vienna
Vienna's zoo began as Emperor Francis I's private menagerie, ringed around a pavilion where the court took breakfast; the arrival of its first giraffe in 1828 set off a city-wide craze for giraffe fashions.
Q 30Which city, the most populous in South Africa, was built on neither a river nor a harbour?
Johannesburg
Johannesburg sprang up in 1886 where gold was found on the Witwatersrand, a ridge that is also a watershed: its streams drain north towards the Limpopo and south towards the Orange.