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60 free Acropolis trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Acropolis trivia quiz covers the sacred rock of Athens from its Mycenaean walls to the glass-floored museum at its foot. The easy questions ask what the word acropolis means, which statesman ordered the great fifth-century buildings, which temple crowns the rock, which goddess it honours, and where the Elgin Marbles ended up. Then it works through the monuments: the Propylaea gate, the tiny Ionic temple of Athena Nike, the Erechtheion with its porch of maidens, the lost bronze Athena Promachos and the gold-and-ivory Athena Parthenos. The hard end is for people who count column drums: the Bluebeard temple, the Persian debris pits, the unfluted drums built into the north wall as a war memorial, the Parthenon's eight-column facade and curved stylobate, the Panathenaic peplos, the Herulian raid, the Frankish tower, the mosque with a minaret, the 1687 Venetian bombardment, the caryatid taken to London, Byron's fury, the titanium dowels of the restoration project and the two men who tore down the swastika in 1941. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on the Acropolis of Athens, the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, the Temple of Athena Nike, the Elgin Marbles, the Athena Parthenos, the caryatids, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and the Acropolis Museum before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our ancient Greece, Athens and Greek mythology quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the Greek word 'acropolis' mean?
Highest city
From akron, 'highest point', and polis, 'city' — many Greek cities had one, but Athens' is the acropolis.
Q 02In ancient times the Acropolis of Athens was also known as Cecropia, after which legendary figure?
Cecrops, the serpent-man first king
Homer's 'strong-built house of Erechtheus' is thought to refer to the Mycenaean fortress on the rock.
Q 03Which Athenian statesman coordinated the fifth-century BC building programme that produced the Parthenon, Propylaea, the porch-of-maidens temple and the Temple of Athena Nike?
Pericles
He lived from about 495 to 429 BC and presided over what is called the Golden Age of Athens.
Q 04How high above sea level does the Acropolis rock rise?
150 m
Its flattish top covers about 3 hectares, and its limestone was thrust over the softer Athens schist by tectonic forces.
Q 05The massive Bronze Age wall around the Acropolis, up to 10 m high, was built in which style?
Cyclopean
It was 760 m long and served as the rock's main defence until the 5th century BC.
Q 06The archaic Hekatompedon temple of about 570 BC is nicknamed the 'Bluebeard temple' because of what?
A pediment sculpture of a serpent-man with blue beards
Its name means 'hundred-footed', and it probably stood where the Parthenon now does.
Q 07After the Persians sacked the rock in 480 BC, what did the Athenians do with the column drums of the unfinished Older Parthenon?
Built them into the north wall as a war memorial
They can still be seen today; damaged statues went into the 'Persian debris' pits, the richest deposit found on the rock.
Q 08Which sculptor supervised the Periclean building programme and made the great statues of Athena?
Phidias
The architects Ictinus and Callicrates worked under him on the Parthenon.
Q 09Who designed the Propylaea, the monumental gateway begun in 437 BC?
Mnesicles
Its north wing was decorated with paintings by Polygnotus, and it later became part of a Frankish ducal palace.
Q 10From which mountain was the marble for the Acropolis buildings quarried?
Mount Pentelicus
It lies northeast of the city, and 530 cubic metres of new Pentelic marble were used in the modern restoration.
Q 11In which years was the Parthenon built, with sculptural work continuing until 432 BC?
447–438 BC
It was raised in thanks for victory over Persia and doubled as the treasury of the Delian League.
Q 12How many columns stand across each end of the Parthenon, instead of the usual six?
8
It is an octastyle Doric temple; the wider front allowed a larger naos without over-spacing the columns.
Q 13The Parthenon's stylobate is not flat: it bulges upward at the centre by roughly how much over its 70-metre length?
10.3 cm
Its columns also swell slightly (entasis) — optical refinements measured precisely in the 19th century.
Q 21What happened to the Temple of Athena Nike in 1686?
The Ottomans dismantled it to build defences
Its stones were dug out of the Turkish wall and reassembled in the 1830s; the latest restoration finished in 2010.
Q 22A famous relief from the Nike temple parapet shows the wingless goddess doing what?
Adjusting her sandal
Her clothes slip from her shoulder as she reaches down — one of the most admired carvings of the period.
Q 23Every four years the Great Panathenaea procession climbed the rock to present Athena with what?
A new woven wool robe
Q 14Athena Parthenos, the great statue inside the Parthenon, was made of gold and ivory over a core of what?
Cypress wood
About 13 metres tall, it was 'chryselephantine'; Pericles said its 40 talents of gold were removable in an emergency.
Q 15According to Thucydides, the Athena Parthenos was said to contain how much removable pure gold, usable as a reserve in an emergency?
40 talents
It could serve as a gold reserve to save the city — provided it was restored afterwards.
Q 16The bronze Athena Promachos stood about 9 m tall behind the Propylaea. Sailors could see the glint of what from Cape Sounion?
The gilded tip of her lance
Her shield was decorated by Mys with the battle of Centaurs and Lapiths.
Q 17How many caryatids support the famous porch of maidens on the north side of the rock?
6
One was removed by Lord Elgin and is in the British Museum; the others are now in the Acropolis Museum.
Q 18According to Vitruvius, caryatids depict women of which town near Sparta, punished for siding with Persia?
Caryae
The Greek karyatides literally means 'maidens of Karyai'.
Q 19The western part of the temple with the caryatid porch served the cult of which god, fused with the archaic king Erechtheus?
Poseidon
The eastern part honoured Athena Polias, and the whole complex skirted several older shrines on uneven ground.
Q 20The Temple of Athena Nike, the smallest on the rock, is built in which architectural order?
Ionic
Designed by Kallikrates with four columns at each end, it was finished around 420 BC during the Peace of Nicias.
The Parthenon frieze is believed to depict the procession, which travelled along the Panathenaic Way.
Q 24The Odeon on the south slope was built in AD 161 by Herodes Atticus in memory of whom?
His wife Regilla
It seated 5,000 under a cedar roof and was wrecked by the Heruli in 267 before its 1950 restoration.
Q 25Which invaders destroyed the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in AD 267 and prompted the building of the Beulé Gate?
The Heruli
The threat turned the Acropolis back into a fortress.
Q 26To whom was the Parthenon dedicated when it became a Christian church?
The Virgin Mary
Under the Latin Duchy it was the cathedral, and after the Ottoman conquest it became a mosque with a minaret.
Q 27Under Ottoman rule, what was the temple with the caryatid porch reportedly used as?
The governor's private harem
Recent research questions the story, since it does not appear in Turkish sources.
Q 28In 1687 the Parthenon was blown apart when a shell hit gunpowder stored inside. Whose artillery fired it?
The Venetians'
It happened during the Morean War siege; the colonnades were only properly re-erected in the modern restoration.
Q 29The medieval Frankopyrgos on the Acropolis, demolished in 1875, was what?
A large tower
After independence, Byzantine, Frankish and Ottoman additions were cleared to 'cleanse' the site; the mosque went in 1843.
Q 30Which German neoclassical architect oversaw the 19th-century restoration of the Acropolis?
Leo von Klenze
Wolf Seidl describes his role in Bavarians in Greece.