Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Budapest trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Budapest trivia quiz covers the Hungarian capital from Roman Aquincum to today's spa-and-ruin-bar city on the Danube. The easy questions are ones any visitor could answer: the river, the three towns that merged in 1873, the huge neo-Gothic parliament, the bridge guarded by stone lions, the seven-towered bastion above the river, and the giant yellow bath in City Park. The harder end is for travellers and history readers: which emperor opened the continent's first underground in 1896, why the basilica and the parliament are exactly the same height, the saint who was thrown off a hill in a barrel, the Holy Right hand, the largest synagogue in Europe, the shoes cast in iron on the embankment, the 1956 uprising and the Soviet tanks that crushed it, the professor who built a cube of 27 wooden blocks, and the striker who scored 84 goals in 85 games. Matthias Church, Vajdahunyad Castle, Margaret Island, Szimpla Kert and Café Gerbeaud get questions too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the city and its landmarks before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Hungary, Vienna and Prague quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Roughly how many people live within Budapest's city limits?
1.7 million
The wider metro area holds about 3.3 million, a third of the country.
Q 02What are the districts west of the Danube collectively called?
Buda
The colloquial name takes in the former Óbuda as well.
Q 03How wide is the Danube at its narrowest point in Budapest?
230 m
The river enters from the north and encircles Óbuda Island and Margaret Island.
Q 04In which year were Buda, Pest and Óbuda unified as Budapest?
1873
Before that the towns were sometimes called Pest-Buda.
Q 05Which side of the Danube is Pest on?
East
Buda is the hilly western side; the Danube islands belong to neither.
Q 06What was the Roman town on the site of Budapest called?
Aquincum
It was capital of Pannonia Inferior from AD 103 and lies in today's Óbuda district.
Q 07Which Roman emperor is believed to have written part of Meditations in the Roman town on this site?
Marcus Aurelius
The city was capital of Pannonia Inferior from AD 103.
Q 08Under which Renaissance king did Buda become a European cultural centre in the 15th century?
Matthias Corvinus
The first Hungarian book was printed in Buda in 1473.
Q 09In which year did the Ottomans finally occupy Buda, beginning some 150 years of rule?
1541
They built many of the city's bathing facilities.
Q 10In which year did the Holy League's army retake Buda from the Ottomans?
1686
The 74,000-strong army included Germans, Croats, Dutch, English, Spaniards and Swedes.
Q 11According to medieval legend, Buda was named for the brother of which ruler?
Attila
The chronicle says Attila killed his brother and threw the body into the Danube.
Q 12What was the Chain Bridge, opened in 1849, the first of?
Permanent crossing of the Danube in Hungary
Designed by Englishman William Tierney Clark, it was built by the unrelated Scot Adam Clark.
Q 13What decorations on the Chain Bridge survived the wartime destruction of every Danube bridge?
Stone lions
They have guarded the bridge since 1852.
Q 21Which guild defended this stretch of the Buda castle wall in the Middle Ages, giving the Bastion its name?
Fishermen
They lived below the walls in Fishtown, or Watertown.
Q 22What distinction does the big neo-Baroque spa in City Park hold?
Largest medicinal bath in Europe
More than 200,000 bathers visited in its opening year, 1913.
Q 23Roughly how many medicinal geothermal springs does Budapest have?
More than 100
It also has the world's largest thermal water cave system.
Q 14Which count gives his name to the Chain Bridge?
Széchenyi
He was a major supporter of the bridge's construction.
Q 15Who designed the Hungarian Parliament Building?
Imre Steindl
It has been the largest building in Hungary since completion.
Q 16How much gold was used in building the Hungarian Parliament?
40 kg
The building also swallowed 40 million bricks and half a million precious stones.
Q 17How tall are both St. Stephen's Basilica and the Parliament, the city's two tallest buildings?
96 m
The equal height symbolised that worldly and spiritual thinking mattered equally; both are 96 metres.
Q 18Which relic is housed in St. Stephen's Basilica?
The king's mummified right hand
The building was originally to be named after Saint Leopold, patron of Austria.
Q 19Which two kings of Hungary were the last to be crowned in Matthias Church?
Franz Joseph I and Charles IV
During Ottoman rule the church served as a mosque.
Q 20What do the towers of the Fisherman's Bastion symbolise?
The seven Magyar chieftains
The chieftains founded Hungary in 895; the bastion was built between 1895 and 1902.
Q 24In what architectural style were the Gellért Baths built between 1912 and 1918?
Art Nouveau
They form part of the famous Hotel Gellért at the foot of the hill.
Q 25How did Saint Gerard, namesake of a Buda landmark, die?
Thrown to his death from a cliff
The 235-metre Gellért Hill overlooks the Danube and carries the Citadella and Liberty Statue.
Q 26What does the 14-metre Liberty Statue on Gellért Hill hold aloft?
A palm leaf
Erected in 1947 to honour Soviet troops, it was later rededicated to Hungarian freedom.
Q 27Which emperor inaugurated the continent's first underground railway in Budapest in 1896?
Franz Joseph
Only London's underground is older; the line still runs beneath the city's grandest boulevard.
Q 28What anniversary did Hungary celebrate in 1896 with the underground, Heroes' Square and Vajdahunyad Castle?
1,000 years since the Magyar conquest
The Millennium Monument's column is topped by the archangel Gabriel.
Q 29What was Vajdahunyad Castle originally made of for the 1896 Millennial Exhibition?
Cardboard and wood
It proved so popular it was rebuilt in stone and brick between 1904 and 1908.
Q 30Which collection, the biggest of its kind in Europe, is housed in Vajdahunyad Castle?
Museum of Hungarian Agriculture
A statue of Anonymus, the unknown medieval chronicler, sits in its courtyard.