Bridge Trivia
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97 free Bridge trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Bridge trivia questions with answers. Bridges are the one piece of engineering everybody has an opinion about, and this quiz covers the famous ones. It runs from the Roman Pont du Gard and the world's first cast-iron bridge, through the Brooklyn Bridge and Barnum's elephants, the Golden Gate's colour, Tower Bridge's bascules, the Sydney Coathanger's rivets and the man who slashed its ribbon, Galloping Gertie's collapse, the Ponte Vecchio and the Bridge of Sighs, the London Bridge that moved to Arizona, the Millau Viaduct, the Akashi Kaikyo and Çanakkale record-holders and China's 164-kilometre viaduct. Since 'bridge' also means the card game, the last few questions cover contract bridge for good measure. Easy questions ask which city the Golden Gate is in and what colour it is; the hard ones want how many times Tower Bridge opens a year, the number of rivets in Sydney Harbour Bridge, the dog killed at Tacoma Narrows and the year Harold Vanderbilt wrote the rules of contract bridge. Written for engineers, travellers, pub-quiz teams and card players. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the bridges and the game, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which president's White House telegraph signal opened the Golden Gate Bridge to cars in 1937?
Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt sent the signal at noon on 28 May 1937; the day before, some 200,000 people had been let across on foot before a single car was allowed.
Q 02What is the official name of the Golden Gate Bridge's colour?
International Orange
International Orange was architect Irving Morrow's choice: it blends with the hills around the strait yet stands out to ships in the bay's fog.
Q 03Which design style shaped the Golden Gate Bridge's towers, streetlights and railings?
Art Deco
Art Deco details came from architect Irving Morrow, after chief engineer Joseph Strauss's first plan, a hybrid of two bridge types, was dropped for a pure suspension bridge.
Q 04Which 1964 New York crossing took the Golden Gate's title as the world's longest suspension span?
Verrazzano-Narrows
Verrazzano-Narrows honours the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, yet a contract error left the bridge's name one z short until New York corrected it in 2018.
Q 05Which annual event has started on the bridge between Staten Island and Brooklyn since 1976?
The New York City Marathon
The New York City Marathon left Central Park in 1976 for a course through all five boroughs, so runners now set off from Staten Island and cross the bridge first.
Q 06Which waterway does the Brooklyn Bridge cross?
The East River
The East River is not a river at all but a tidal strait; the Brooklyn Bridge became its first fixed crossing in 1883.
Q 07Which engineer completed the Brooklyn Bridge, assisted by his wife Emily, after his father John died?
Washington Roebling
Washington Roebling was crippled by decompression sickness from the caissons, so he directed the work from his Brooklyn apartment while Emily carried his instructions to the site.
Q 08How did P. T. Barnum show doubters that the Brooklyn Bridge was safe?
He led 21 elephants across it
He led 21 elephants across it in May 1884, a year after a panic on the bridge crushed twelve people to death on its stairs.
Q 09Tower Bridge in London combines suspension spans with what kind of opening central section?
Bascules
Bascules, the two lifting leaves, rose more than 6,000 times in the bridge's first year for a busy port; now that river traffic has thinned, they open far less often.
Q 10What did driver Albert Gunter do in 1952 when Tower Bridge began opening under his bus?
Jumped the gap
Jumped the gap: he accelerated, and his number 78 landed on the far leaf, which had not yet started to rise; he was rewarded with £10 for his bravery.
Q 11What is the Sydney Harbour Bridge's nickname?
The Coathanger
The Coathanger owes its nickname to its great steel arch, a shape chosen because it was cheaper and could carry heavier loads than the design first approved.
Q 12How many hand-driven rivets hold the Sydney Harbour Bridge together?
Six million
All Australian-made, and the last was driven through the deck on 21 January 1932.
Q 13At Sydney Harbour Bridge's opening in 1932, an intruder beat the premier to the ribbon, slashing at it with what?
A sword
A sword: Captain Francis de Groot of the paramilitary New Guard cut in ahead of Premier Jack Lang; he was arrested, and Lang went on to cut the ribbon and open the bridge.
Q 21The Øresund Bridge links Sweden with which country?
Denmark
Denmark: from Sweden the bridge runs to the artificial island of Peberholm, then road and railway dive into a tunnel beside Copenhagen's airport, which keeps its flight paths clear.
Q 22Scotland's Forth Bridge, opened in 1890, is what type of railway bridge?
Cantilever
Cantilever was the cautious choice: a suspension bridge was already being built there when its designer's Tay Bridge collapsed in a storm in 1879, and his plan was abandoned.
Q 23A bridge opened over the River Severn in Shropshire in 1781 was the world's first major bridge made of what?
Cast iron
Cast iron: Abraham Darby III's ironworkers had no precedent for building in the material, so they joined the parts like timber, with dovetails and other carpenters' joints.
Q 14Turkey's 1915 Çanakkale Bridge, the world's longest suspension span since 2022, crosses which strait near Gallipoli?
The Dardanelles
The Dardanelles crossing is built of dates: its 2,023-metre main span marks the Turkish Republic's centenary in 2023, and the 1915 in its name recalls an Ottoman naval victory in the strait.
Q 15China's Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge, the world's longest since 2011, carries what?
A high-speed railway
A high-speed railway: the viaduct lifts the Beijing-Shanghai line over the rice paddies and wetlands of the Yangtze delta, and the same line crosses another of the world's longest bridges, the 114 km Langfang-Qingxian viaduct.
Q 16Which British architect designed France's Millau Viaduct, long the world's tallest bridge?
Norman Foster
Norman Foster designed it with French engineer Michel Virlogeux; the steel road deck was assembled on land and then pushed out across the seven piers.
Q 17Who occupied the shops on Florence's Ponte Vecchio before a Medici decree handed them to goldsmiths?
Butchers and tanners
Butchers and tanners traded there until the stench reached the Medici corridor that runs above the shops; a decree then reserved the bridge for goldsmiths and jewellers.
Q 18Which bridge was the only one across Venice's Grand Canal until the 1850s?
Rialto Bridge
Rialto Bridge was built by Antonio da Ponte after a design competition; for more than 250 years, crossing the canal anywhere else meant taking a gondola ferry.
Q 19Venice's Bridge of Sighs connects the Doge's Palace with what?
The New Prison
The New Prison stood across a narrow canal from the palace courtrooms; the bridge's famous name dates only from the Romantic period, from the idea of prisoners sighing at a last glimpse of the lagoon.
Q 20By legend, Charles IV laid the first stone of Charles Bridge in 1357 on 9/7 at 5:31 because the digits form what?
A palindrome
A palindrome: year, day, month and time read 1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1, odd numbers climbing to nine and back down, which the emperor is said to have chosen to give the bridge strength.
Q 24The Pont du Gard in southern France was built by the Romans to carry what?
Water to Nîmes
Water to Nîmes ran through a channel almost 50 km long; when it fell out of use, the bridge survived the Middle Ages because it earned tolls as a river crossing.
Q 25What nickname did construction workers give the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge for how it moved in the wind?
Galloping Gertie
Galloping Gertie bucked in even light winds and tore itself apart four months after opening; ever since, big bridge designs have been tested in wind tunnels.
Q 26What was the only life lost when the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in 1940?
A dog left in a car
A dog left in a car: Tubby, a cocker spaniel, was too frightened to move and nipped the professor who went back to coax him out moments before the span fell.
Q 27The Mackinac Bridge, nicknamed the 'Mighty Mac', is in which US state?
Michigan
Michigan's two peninsulas were linked only by ferries until 1957; designer David Steinman, mindful of the Tacoma Narrows collapse, gave the bridge deep stiffening trusses against the wind.
Q 28Why does Virginia's Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel dive under the water at two points along its 17.6 miles?
To keep shipping lanes open
To keep shipping lanes open: the road drops into mile-long tunnels between four artificial islands, so cargo ships and the Navy's fleet from Norfolk sail over the traffic.
Q 29Canada's Confederation Bridge links the mainland to which island?
Prince Edward Island
Prince Edward Island was promised a year-round link when it joined Canada in 1873, but winter ice kept stopping the ferries; islanders voted for a bridge in 1988 and it opened in 1997.
Q 30An 1830s London Bridge was bought in 1968 by Robert McCulloch and rebuilt in which US state?
Arizona
Arizona's Lake Havasu City got the bridge's granite, each block numbered, shipped and fixed over a new concrete core; the tale that the buyers thought they were getting Tower Bridge is a discredited rumour.