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49 free Havana trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Havana was founded three times before it stuck. Diego Velázquez put it on a swampy south coast in 1514, the settlers tried again by the Almendares River, and only in 1519 did the town settle beside the deep harbour that made it Spain's key to the New World. This quiz follows the story from there: the French corsair who burned the town in 1555, the walls and castles that followed, the 1762 British siege that was traded for Florida, the first railway in Latin America, the USS Maine and the 1902 republic, and the revolution that turned the Habana Hilton into Fidel Castro's headquarters. It also walks the modern city: the 8 km Malecón, El Capitolio and the diamond under its dome, the Hotel Nacional and its 1946 mob summit, Hemingway's Finca Vigía and his fisherman from Cojímar, Buena Vista Social Club, Havana Club rum, Industriales baseball, the 2019 tornado and Camila Cabello's 'Havana'. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Havana and its landmarks, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Try our Cuba quiz next if you want the rest of the island.
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Q 01Havana is the capital of which country?
Cuba
Havana is Cuba's capital and largest city, with about 2.1 million people, lying on the island's north-west coast some 90 miles south of Key West.
Q 02Havana overtook which city to become Cuba's capital in 1552?
Santiago
The deep, sheltered harbour was the deciding advantage, and it made Havana the gathering point for treasure galleons heading home to Spain.
Q 03What is the full Spanish name given to the town that became Havana?
San Cristóbal de la Habana
The town was christened San Cristóbal de la Habana in honour of Saint Christopher, the city's patron saint, whose feast on 16 November is kept as Havana's anniversary.
Q 04The name 'Habana' is thought to come from Habaguanex, who was what?
A Taíno chief
Habaguanex was a Taíno chief, or cacique, said to have controlled the region when the Spanish arrived; little else is recorded of him, so the derivation stays a theory.
Q 05Why is the city spelled with a 'v' in English but a 'b' in Spanish?
A sound shift called betacism
In most Spanish dialects the 'b' and 'v' sounds merge, so English writers heard and wrote a 'v'.
Q 06Where did Diego Velázquez first found Havana in 1514?
On the south coast, 69 km away
The low, swampy ground near the Mayabeque River doomed the settlement, and every Spanish attempt to build there failed.
Q 07Which French corsair captured and burned Havana in 1555?
Jacques de Sores
Jacques de Sores, a Huguenot corsair, seized Havana in July 1555 and burned it when no great ransom was paid; the raid pushed Spain to fortify its main Caribbean ports.
Q 08Which king granted Havana the title of City in 1592?
Philip II
Philip II raised Havana from town to city in 1592, recognising the port's role as assembly point of the treasure fleets; the Crown later styled it 'Key to the New World'.
Q 09A 1649 epidemic that killed a third of Havana's population was which disease?
Yellow fever
Yellow fever, carried by ships from Cartagena in present-day Colombia, swept Havana in 1649 during the first recorded outbreaks of the disease in the Americas.
Q 10By the mid-18th century Havana ranked third in the Americas by population, behind which pair?
Lima and Mexico City
With more than 70,000 residents Havana trailed only Lima and Mexico City in the Americas, outranking Boston and New York; its royal shipyard was building warships for Spain's navy.
Q 11Which power captured Havana in a 1762 siege during the Seven Years' War?
Britain
Britain's expedition of more than 50 ships and 11,000 men landed east of the city and took it after a two-month siege; the occupiers opened Havana to trade with their colonies.
Q 12Under the 1763 Treaty of Paris, Spain got Havana back in exchange for what?
Florida
Spain ceded Florida to recover Havana, then made the city the most heavily fortified in the Americas, starting the huge La Cabaña fortress in 1763.
Q 13Whose remains were moved to Havana in 1796 and stayed until 1898?
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus's remains were shipped from Santo Domingo to Havana's cathedral in 1796 and moved to Seville Cathedral in 1898 after Spain lost Cuba.
Q 21Havana's climate is classed under Köppen as which type?
Tropical savanna
Havana has a tropical savanna (Köppen Aw) climate, with a wet season from May to October and a drier winter; trade winds temper the heat and winter lows rarely fall below 10 °C.
Q 22What rare disaster struck eastern Havana in January 2019?
An EF4 tornado
An EF4 tornado tore through Regla, Guanabacoa and Diez de Octubre on 27 January 2019, killing several people and damaging thousands of homes, the first of that strength in Cuba since 1940.
Q 23Which Havana neighbourhood is the city's financial district and home to the University of Havana?
Vedado
Q 14In the 19th century Havana earned which nickname?
Paris of the Antilles
Trade with North America paid for theatres and neoclassical mansions, and by the late 19th century Havana's elegance earned it the nickname 'Paris of the Antilles'.
Q 15The sinking of which US battleship in Havana Harbor triggered the Spanish–American War?
USS Maine
USS Maine exploded and sank in Havana Harbor on 15 February 1898, killing about 260 men; 'Remember the Maine' fuelled the push for war with Spain.
Q 16Havana became the capital of the independent Republic of Cuba in which year?
1902
The Republic of Cuba was proclaimed on 20 May 1902 with Havana as its capital, and Tomás Estrada Palma was inaugurated there as the first president.
Q 17Which Confederate Secretary of State fled to Havana after the American Civil War?
Judah P. Benjamin
Judah P. Benjamin escaped by way of the Bahamas to Havana in 1865, then sailed for England, where he rebuilt his career as a barrister and Queen's Counsel.
Q 18Old Havana was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which year?
1982
UNESCO inscribed Old Havana and its fortifications in 1982; city historian Eusebio Leal Spengler then led a decades-long restoration of the colonial core until his death in 2020.
Q 19How many municipalities is Havana divided into?
15
Havana is divided into 15 municipalities, from Playa in the west to Habana del Este across the bay, which are further split into 105 consejos populares, or wards.
Q 20Which river crosses Havana from south to north before reaching the sea a few miles west of the bay?
Almendares
The Almendares rises south of the city and flows north to the sea west of the bay; the Torreón de la Chorrera, a 1646 watchtower, guards its mouth.
Vedado, laid out on a grid west of Centro Habana, is the financial district and home to the University of Havana; its high-rise hotels and casinos went up in the 1950s for American tourists.
Q 24The University of Havana was established in which year?
1728
The University of Havana was founded in 1728 by Dominican friars as the Real y Pontificia Universidad de San Gerónimo de La Habana, in the Dominican convent of Old Havana.
Q 25Havana's international airport is named after which figure?
José Martí
José Martí International Airport, in the Boyeros municipality south-west of the centre, honours the poet and independence hero who died in battle in 1895; it is Cubana de Aviación's hub.
Q 26What was the Havana Hilton, opened in 1958, famous for during 1959?
Serving as Fidel Castro's residence
Built for $24 million under Batista, it is now the Hotel Tryp Habana Libre.
Q 27Which giant state ice-cream parlour opened in Havana in 1966?
Coppelia
Coppelia, the state ice-cream parlour opened in 1966 at the top of La Rampa, serves thousands of customers daily from its circular pavilion and appears in the 1993 film Strawberry and Chocolate.
Q 28The Bacardi Building, finished in 1930, is a celebrated example of which style?
Art Deco
The Edificio Bacardí is Havana's finest Art Deco landmark, faced in red granite and terracotta and topped by a stepped tower bearing the company's bat emblem.
Q 29The Necrópolis Cristóbal Colón, built in 1876, holds roughly how many tombs?
Nearly 1 million
It is one of the most famous cemeteries in Latin America and functions as an open-air museum.
Q 30The Havana team Industriales plays which sport?
Baseball
Industriales, nicknamed the Blue Lions, are Havana's baseball team in Cuba's National Series and its most successful club, playing at the 55,000-seat Estadio Latinoamericano.