Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
60 free Buenos Aires trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Buenos Aires was founded twice, bombed once by its own navy, and named after a Sardinian Madonna its sailors prayed to for fair winds. This quiz walks through all of it: Pedro de Mendoza's failed 1536 settlement and Juan de Garay's permanent one, the British invasions, the May Revolution, the 1880 federalization and the first elected mayor in 1996. The rest of the set is the city people actually visit and live in. There are questions on the Casa Rosada and why it is pink, the Obelisk that a German firm finished in 31 days, Avenida 9 de Julio, the Teatro Colón, La Recoleta Cemetery, Caminito and the Floralis Genérica, plus tango, Lunfardo slang, colectivos, the Subte, black-and-yellow taxis and the 48 official barrios. Sports fans get Boca and River, the 1978 World Cup, Fangio and pato. Easy questions ask which country the city leads and what the dance is called; hard ones want the year of federalization, the Verdi opera that opened the Colón and the world first inside the Kavanagh Building. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our Argentina and Real Madrid quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of which country?
Argentina
The city proper holds about 3.1 million people, but the urban area swells to 16.7 million, the 21st most populous metropolitan area on Earth.
Q 02The city sits on the southwestern shore of which estuary, often described as the world's widest river?
The Río de la Plata
Puerto Madero, the ecological reserve, the airport and the port were all built on land reclaimed from its muddy waters.
Q 03Residents of Buenos Aires are commonly known by what nickname, which literally means 'port-city person'?
Porteños
The same word is used in Valparaíso, Montevideo, Acapulco and other port cities, but abroad it is almost always taken to mean someone from Buenos Aires.
Q 04'Buenos Aires' honours a Madonna venerated as patroness of which Mediterranean island?
Sardinia
The Madonna of Bonaria's church stands on a hill above Cagliari that Catalan settlers prized because it was free of the swampy old town's foul smell.
Q 05Who led the Spanish expedition that first founded the city on 2 February 1536?
Pedro de Mendoza
His settlement stood in what is now San Telmo and lasted only a few years before attacks by indigenous people forced the settlers out.
Q 06From which present-day capital did Juan de Garay sail downriver to found Buenos Aires in 1580?
Asunción
Garay came down the Paraná from Paraguay's capital and kept the name chosen for the first settlement, calling the town the City of the Most Holy Trinity and Port of Saint Mary of the Fair Winds.
Q 07Which navigator, sailing for Spain in 1516, first reached the Río de la Plata and was killed by the Charrúa?
Juan Díaz de Solís
His death in what is now Uruguay ended the expedition; Magellan would sail into the same estuary four years later.
Q 08Which foreign power briefly occupied Buenos Aires in 1806 and failed again in 1807?
Britain
An army from Montevideo under Santiago de Liniers retook the city, and the militias raised to repel the invaders shifted power toward the criollos who would soon push for independence.
Q 09The May Revolution that removed the last Spanish viceroy took place in which year?
1810
Formal independence came six years later at the Congress of Tucumán, but the May date is the one Argentines celebrate as a national holiday.
Q 10In which year was Buenos Aires federalized as the seat of national government?
1880
The settlement ended decades of conflict, and the city was enlarged in 1888 to swallow the towns of Belgrano and Flores, now ordinary neighbourhoods.
Q 11Since a 1994 amendment gave Buenos Aires autonomy, the city is commonly known by which four-letter abbreviation?
CABA
The letters stand for Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires; locals just as often call the city 'Capital' to distinguish it from the surrounding province.
Q 12Who won the city's first mayoral election in 1996 and was the nation's president from 1999 to 2001?
Fernando de la Rúa
Until then the president had simply appointed the mayor; the office was renamed Head of Government under the new statutes.
Q 13The pink presidential palace facing the city's main historic square is known by what name?
Casa Rosada
Q 21Boca Juniors' stadium is nicknamed La Bombonera because of its resemblance to what?
A chocolate box
Architect Viktor Sulčič reportedly kept bringing a birthday gift box of chocolates to project meetings because its shape matched the stadium plans.
Q 22The fiercest derby in Argentine football, the Superclásico, pits Boca Juniors against which club?
River Plate
The Observer once listed watching the fixture among the 50 sporting things to do before you die; the city fields no fewer than 24 professional clubs.
Q 23Which team did hosts Argentina beat 3–1 in Buenos Aires to win the 1978 World Cup?
The Netherlands
One story says the colour blended Federalist red and Unitarian white to defuse politics; another says the original paint contained cow's blood to fight humidity.
Q 14Which president reportedly had the government house painted pink to blend the colours of two rival factions?
Domingo Sarmiento
Sarmiento also added patios, gardens and wrought-iron grillwork and commissioned the Central Post Office next door in 1873.
Q 15The Obelisk of Buenos Aires was erected in 1936 to mark what anniversary?
400 years since the city's first foundation
The 67.5-metre concrete needle went up in a matter of weeks, and three years later the city council voted to demolish it, a decision the mayor vetoed.
Q 16How many days did the German contractors take to complete the Obelisk?
31
The 157 workers poured rapid-hardening cement in two-metre sections; inside, a straight staircase of 206 steps climbs to four small windows at the top.
Q 17Avenida 9 de Julio, generally called the widest avenue in the world, is named after what?
Argentina's Independence Day
At 110 metres across, with up to seven lanes each way, it takes most pedestrians several traffic-light cycles to cross.
Q 18The Teatro Colón opened its current building in 1908 with which Verdi opera?
Aida
The site had been the Park Station, the country's first railway station; the building took 20 years to complete and reopened in 2010 after a four-year restoration.
Q 19Which architect gave Buenos Aires the Floralis Genérica, a giant steel flower that closes each night?
Eduardo Catalano
The 23-metre, eighteen-ton flower opens at 8 a.m. and shuts at sunset, glowing red inside; it stays open all night on four special dates including 25 May and New Year's Eve.
Q 20The brightly painted street museum called Caminito is found in which neighbourhood?
La Boca
Painter Benito Quinquela Martín rescued the alley from being a landfill in the late 1950s, and it shares its name with a 1926 song by his friend Juan de Dios Filiberto.
The city also hosted the first Pan American Games in 1951 and the inaugural basketball World Championship a year earlier.
Q 24Buenos Aires lost its bid to host the 1956 Summer Olympics by a single vote to which city?
Melbourne
The city bid again for 1968 and 2004 without success, but did host the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics.
Q 25Pato, declared the national game in 1953, is best described as a kind of what?
Basketball played on horseback
The name means 'duck', because early games used a live duck in a basket; polo, brought by English immigrants, is played across the avenue from the Palermo racetrack.
Q 26Which five-time F1 champion is celebrated in the Argentine city whose circuit staged 20 Grands Prix?
Juan Manuel Fangio
Only Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton, with seven titles each, have surpassed his five championships.
Q 27The city's metro, opened in 1913, holds what distinction?
Oldest in the Southern Hemisphere
Line A kept its belle-époque stations and ran its original 1913 wooden cars, nicknamed Las Brujas, until 2013.
Q 28What is the local name for the city's more than 150 competing bus lines?
Colectivos
They run without fixed timetables, several times an hour, and rarely stop more than four blocks from a commuter's front door.
Q 29The city's main international airport, in the suburb of Ezeiza, is officially named after which person?
Ministro Pistarini
Jorge Newbery is the domestic airport on the riverbank in Palermo, the only one inside the city limits.
Q 30Which company runs the ferries from Buenos Aires to Colonia, Montevideo and Punta del Este?
Buquebus
More than 2.2 million people a year cross the estuary this way, and one of the fleet is a catamaran capable of about 80 km/h.