Europe Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
99 free Europe trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Europe packs fifty-odd countries, more than two hundred languages and a few thousand years of drama into a space smaller than Canada. A capital that sits on two countries' borders, a state with fewer than a thousand residents, a river that passes more capitals than any other, a language with no known relatives, a football champion that was not even supposed to be at the tournament: every question here is a fact worth repeating. The 99 questions roam the whole continent rather than one corner of it, from the Atlantic fringe to the Caucasus and from the Arctic to the Mediterranean. They cover geography and records, capitals and microstates, languages, history from the Minoans to the fall of the Wall, festivals and food, famous landmarks and the basics of how the European Union works, with a few sporting moments for good measure. Each answer comes with a short explanation of why it matters. It suits a pub quiz round, a classroom warm-up before a school trip, or anyone planning an interrail summer. Play it on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for the table.
30 of 99 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which is the world's smallest sovereign state by both area and population?
Vatican City
Vatican City: the 1929 Lateran Treaty that created it finally settled the long-standing 'Roman question' between the popes and Italy.
Q 02Which river flows through four national capitals on its way to the Black Sea?
Danube
The Danube: in the early 1970s the Iron Gate dam flooded the island of Ada Kaleh, home to a Turkish Muslim community.
Q 03Which city is the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state?
Reykjavík
Reykjavík: Nuuk in Greenland lies a few kilometres farther north, but Greenland is an autonomous territory, not a sovereign state.
Q 04Which country has a large share of its land lying below sea level?
Netherlands
The Netherlands lost a newly reclaimed polder to the St Elizabeth flood of 1421, and the drowned land became the Biesbosch.
Q 05Which team, let into Euro 1992 only after Yugoslavia was disqualified, went on to lift the trophy?
Denmark
Denmark entered as runners-up from Yugoslavia's qualifying group and beat a newly reunified Germany 2–0 in the final.
Q 06Which city presents the Nobel Peace Prize, the only Nobel award not handed out in Stockholm?
Oslo
Oslo: Nobel's will gave this prize to a committee chosen by Norway's parliament, and no one knows why, though Norway was then in union with Sweden.
Q 07Which Paris fortress-prison, stormed on 14 July 1789, was holding only seven prisoners that day?
Bastille
The Bastille's seven inmates included four forgers, yet the storming became the anniversary France marks as its Fête nationale every 14 July.
Q 08Which country dissolved into two states on 1 January 1993 in what was dubbed the Velvet Divorce?
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia: parliament decided the split without holding a referendum, and the nickname nods to the bloodless Velvet Revolution of 1989.
Q 09Which EU member of the time kept its own currency when euro notes and coins arrived in 2002?
Britain
Britain had secured an opt-out from the single currency in the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, so it never had to give up the pound.
Q 10Which dormant Caucasus volcano is usually counted as Europe's highest peak, ahead of Mont Blanc?
Mount Elbrus
Mount Elbrus: German mountain troops planted a swastika flag on its summit in August 1942, and Hitler was reportedly furious at the stunt.
Q 11Which river, Europe's longest, never reaches an ocean because it ends in the landlocked Caspian Sea?
Volga
The Volga ends in the landlocked Caspian, but since 1952 the Volga–Don Canal has given ships a route to the Black Sea and the oceans.
Q 12Which EU member speaks a language derived from Sicilian Arabic, the union's only Semitic official language?
Malta
Malta: Sicilian Arabic died out in Sicily by about 1300 but lived on in Malta, where it evolved into Maltese.
Q 13Which four-language country labels its stamps 'Helvetia', its Latin name, rather than its own?
Switzerland
Switzerland: the same neutral Latin name, Confoederatio Helvetica, is why its internet domain is .ch.
Q 21Which capital was levelled by an earthquake, tsunami and firestorm on All Saints' Day in 1755?
Lisbon
Lisbon: its rebuilt Baixa, braced by wooden lattice 'Pombaline cages', is among the earliest earthquake-resistant districts in Europe.
Q 22Which city hosted the 1814–15 congress, led by Austria's Metternich, that redrew Europe after Napoleon?
Vienna
Vienna: the congress signed its Final Act on 9 June 1815, nine days before Napoleon's last defeat at Waterloo.
Q 23Which country's near-bloodless Carnation Revolution of April 1974 brought down the Estado Novo regime?
Portugal
Portugal: restaurant worker Celeste Caeiro handed carnations to soldiers, others put them in gun muzzles, and the flowers named the revolution.
Q 14Which city hosts the European Commission and the Council of the EU, seats fixed by the Treaty of Amsterdam?
Brussels
Brussels has never been formally declared the EU's capital, yet the European Council also fixed its summits there in the early 2000s.
Q 15Which French city, official seat of the European Parliament, has hosted the Council of Europe since 1949?
Strasbourg
Strasbourg, not Marseille, is where 'La Marseillaise' was composed, in 1792, as a war song for the Army of the Rhine.
Q 16The EEC's six founders had pooled which two industries in 1951?
Coal and steel
Coal and steel: Robert Schuman said pooling them would make war between France and Germany 'not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible'.
Q 17The town of Schengen, which gave its name to Europe's passport-free zone, lies in which country?
Luxembourg
Luxembourg hosted the 1985 signing aboard a river boat on the Moselle, at the tripoint where France and Germany meet it.
Q 18Which city staged the first modern Olympics in 1896, centred on a stadium refurbished in marble?
Athens
Athens: marathon winner Spyridon Louis became a national hero, and at the 1936 Berlin Games he presented Hitler with an olive branch.
Q 19Which Polish port's shipyard gave birth to the Solidarity trade union under Lech Wałęsa in 1980?
Gdańsk
Gdańsk's shipyard strike ended in an August 1980 agreement with the government, and Wałęsa won the Nobel Peace Prize three years later.
Q 20Which state captured Constantinople on 29 May 1453 after a 53-day siege, ending Byzantine rule for good?
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire's 21-year-old sultan Mehmed II made the city his new capital in place of Adrianople and earned the nickname 'the Conqueror'.
Q 24Which island holds Knossos, the heart of the Minoan civilisation?
Crete
Crete: 'Minoan' comes from Minos, the legendary king of Crete, a label popularised by Arthur Evans, who excavated Knossos from 1900.
Q 25Which country let voters cast legally binding ballots online in its 2005 local elections?
Estonia
Estonia: an online voter may vote again, and only the last online vote counts, while a paper ballot at a polling station cancels it.
Q 26About two million people formed the 1989 Baltic Way human chain to mark 50 years since which pact?
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact: its secret protocol put the Baltic states in the Soviet sphere, a protocol the Soviet Union still denied existed.
Q 27Which capital's Palace of the Parliament, ordered by Nicolae Ceaușescu, is believed to be the heaviest building on Earth?
Bucharest
Bucharest: large parts of the historic city were demolished in the 1980s to make way for the palace and its civic centre.
Q 28Which Istanbul landmark went from cathedral to mosque to museum and back to mosque in 2020?
Hagia Sophia
Hagia Sophia: after earthquakes brought part of its dome down in the 550s, a new and taller dome was consecrated in 562.
Q 29Which nuclear plant's reactor 4 exploded on 26 April 1986 near Pripyat, spreading fallout across Europe?
Chernobyl
Chernobyl: Pripyat was abandoned, and the plant's workers were rehoused in a new purpose-built town, Slavutych.
Q 30Which Paris landmark was the centrepiece of the 1889 World's Fair?
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower was commissioned as a temporary structure for the fair, yet it became the exposition's most famous survivor.