Jakarta Trivia
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48 free Jakarta trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Jakarta trivia quiz covers Indonesia's giant capital from the port of Sunda Kelapa and Fatahillah's Jayakarta to Coen's Batavia, the 1740 massacre and Glodok, the Japanese renaming, the 1945 proclamation and Sukarno's monument-building for the 1962 Asian Games. It also takes in today's city — Monas and its golden flame, Istiqlal Mosque and its tunnel to the cathedral, Kota Tua and the pinisi at Sunda Kelapa, the Betawi people, soto betawi, kerak telor and ondel-ondel, the Thousand Islands, Gelora Bung Karno, Transjakarta and the MRT, Soekarno-Hatta airport, the Autograph Tower, land subsidence and the planned move of the capital to Nusantara. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation. Enjoy this one? Try our Indonesia and Bali quizzes next.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Jakarta governor went on to win Indonesia's presidency in 2014?
Joko Widodo
Joko Widodo, a furniture exporter turned mayor of Surakarta, governed Jakarta for just two years, from 2012 to 2014, before winning the presidency.
Q 02On which island does Jakarta lie?
Java
Java is home to roughly half of all Indonesians, which is why the island dominates the country's politics and economy.
Q 03By what acronym is Greater Jakarta known locally?
Jabodetabek
Jabodetabek strings together Jakarta and its satellite cities Bogor, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi; a 2025 UN estimate of 41.9 million people made it, by that measure, the world's most populous city.
Q 04What name did the Dutch give the city they built on the ruins of Jayakarta in 1619?
Batavia
Batavia honoured the Batavi, a Germanic tribe of the Rhine delta that once rebelled against Rome and that the Dutch of the day claimed as their ancestors.
Q 05Which pepper port of a Hindu kingdom stood on the site of Jakarta before the 1500s?
Sunda Kelapa
Sunda Kelapa was the main port of the Sunda kingdom, and it is still at work: wooden cargo schooners tie up at the old harbour to carry freight between the islands.
Q 06Which VOC governor-general destroyed Jayakarta in 1619 and refounded the city?
Jan Pieterszoon Coen
Jan Pieterszoon Coen was long honoured as a Dutch national hero, but his bloody 1621 conquest of the Banda Islands to seize the nutmeg trade has made him a deeply contested figure.
Q 07Which ride-hailing giant began in Jakarta as a call centre for just 20 motorcycle-taxi drivers?
Gojek
Gojek's riders drive ojek, Jakarta's motorcycle taxis; customers had to phone in their orders until the app arrived in 2015 and added food delivery and shopping to the rides.
Q 08What happened to the Chinese community of Dutch-ruled Jakarta in October 1740?
A massacre by soldiers and mobs
A massacre by soldiers and mobs raged for two weeks after Chinese sugar workers, fearing that deportees were being thrown overboard at sea, rose in revolt.
Q 09Who renamed the city 'Jakarta' in 1942?
The Japanese occupation authorities
The Japanese occupation authorities dropped the Dutch colonial name in 1942, yet the old name stayed in international use until the Netherlands recognised Indonesian independence in 1949.
Q 10On what date was Indonesian independence proclaimed in Jakarta?
17 August 1945
17 August 1945 came two days after the war in the Pacific ended: impatient youth activists had kidnapped the nationalist leaders the day before to press them into declaring independence at once.
Q 11To which city did the republican leaders move their temporary capital in 1946?
Yogyakarta
Yogyakarta took in the republic's government in January 1946 as Allied and Dutch forces took control of Jakarta, and its sultan, Hamengkubuwono IX, helped to fund the new government.
Q 12Which president's monument-building programme prepared Jakarta for the 1962 Asian Games?
Sukarno
Sukarno, who had trained as a civil engineer, ordered the Senayan sports complex, Hotel Indonesia and the Semanggi interchange built to show off the young republic to its Asian Games visitors.
Q 13Monas rises from the centre of which Jakarta square?
Merdeka Square
Q 21At the mouth of which river did the Dutch lay out the canal city that became Jakarta?
The Ciliwung
The Ciliwung rises in the highlands south of Bogor and flows through both cities; the Dutch channelled its final stretch into the canals of their walled town.
Q 22What is the name of the creole ethnic group native to Jakarta?
Betawi
Betawi are one of Indonesia's youngest ethnic groups: they emerged in the colonial era as people from across the archipelago, China, Arabia and Europe blended in the port city.
Q 23Which Indonesian soup has a famous Jakarta version made with beef, offal and coconut milk or cow's milk?
Soto
Soto comes in many regional styles, and Jakarta's is the creamy one; the soup is so widely loved that it was named one of Indonesia's five national dishes in 2018.
Merdeka Square covers about a square kilometre; the Dutch knew it as Koningsplein, 'King's Square', and it now carries the Indonesian word for freedom.
Q 14What crowns the top of Monas?
A gold-leaf flame
A gold-leaf flame, the 'Flame of Independence', stands for the burning spirit of the struggle against colonial rule; a lift carries visitors to an observation deck just beneath it.
Q 15Which animal, a bronze gift from the King of Siam in 1871, stands outside Jakarta's National Museum?
An elephant
An elephant in bronze was presented by King Chulalongkorn in 1871, and Jakartans have called the museum Gedung Gajah, the 'Elephant Building', ever since.
Q 16What distinction does Jakarta's Istiqlal hold?
Largest mosque in Southeast Asia
Largest mosque in Southeast Asia, Istiqlal was designed by Friedrich Silaban, a Protestant pastor's son who won the design competition for Indonesia's national mosque.
Q 17What was built to link Istiqlal with the Catholic cathedral across the road?
A pedestrian tunnel
A pedestrian tunnel, the Terowongan Silaturahmi or 'Tunnel of Friendship', runs under the street between the mosque and the cathedral as a symbol of religious harmony.
Q 18What is the name of Jakarta's historic quarter, the core of the old Dutch walled city?
Kota Tua
Kota Tua, or 'Old Town', was abandoned by the colonial government in 1808, when the governor-general moved the seat of power to higher, healthier ground further south.
Q 19What did the building that now houses the Jakarta History Museum open as in 1710?
The city hall
The city hall, or Stadhuis, was the administrative heart of the Dutch company town, and the cells beneath its front portico served as dungeons until 1846.
Q 20Which traditional two-masted wooden cargo ships still load at Jakarta's old harbour?
Pinisi
Pinisi strictly names the rig and sails rather than the hull, and UNESCO listed the South Sulawesi craft of building these schooners as intangible heritage in 2017.
Q 24What is kerak telor, a Jakarta Fair favourite?
A spicy omelette of glutinous rice and egg
A spicy omelette of glutinous rice and egg, kerak telor is cooked to order over charcoal and topped with shredded coconut and fried shallots; connoisseurs insist on duck egg over chicken.
Q 25Which giant puppet figures are a symbol of Jakarta's native performance culture?
Ondel-ondel
Ondel-ondel were once paraded around villages to ward off evil spirits and disease; today the towering pair, one male and one female, mostly turns out for festivals and welcomes.
Q 26Where is Nusantara, the capital city Indonesia began building in 2022?
East Kalimantan, on Borneo
East Kalimantan, on Borneo, was picked in 2019 because it lies near the centre of the archipelago and faces little risk of natural disasters.
Q 27Which threat to Jakarta helped drive Indonesia's decision to build a new capital?
Land subsidence and flooding
Land subsidence and flooding feed each other: with groundwater pumped out from beneath it, parts of North Jakarta were sinking by up to 25 cm a year in 2018, and almost half the city lay below sea level.
Q 28Which islands north of the city form Jakarta's only regency?
Thousand Islands
The Thousand Islands fall far short of their name: depending on who is counting, the chain has somewhere between about 110 and 350 islands.
Q 29Which nickname, echoing New York's 'Big Apple', do expats and travel writers give Jakarta?
The Big Durian
The Big Durian likens the city to Southeast Asia's spiky, strong-smelling fruit: like the durian, the sprawling capital can be a shock at first sight and smell.
Q 30Which country's loan helped pay for Jakarta's main stadium, built for the 1962 Asian Games?
The Soviet Union
The Soviet Union granted a soft loan of $12.5 million and sent specialists to help build the arena; the president drove the first pile in 1960, and the finished stadium held 110,000.