La Paz
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40 free La Paz trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
La Paz does not behave like other big cities. It sits in a canyon more than three and a half kilometres above sea level, visitors often feel the height before they have left the terminal, and daily life has adapted in ways that surprise almost everyone who arrives. It is the highest seat of government in the world, and that is only where the fun facts begin. This quiz covers the facts people search for: how residents get around and stay safe on the roads, what is sold at the city's strangest market, the festivals and the food, the mountains on the skyline, the matches played in thin air, and the rebellions, sieges and name changes that have shaped the city since 1548. It suits travellers planning a trip to Bolivia, geography and Spanish classes, and anyone who enjoys a city that does almost everything its own way. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than your score.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Commuters in La Paz glide over the traffic on the world's largest urban network of what?
Cable cars
Cable cars arrived in 2014 under the name Mi Teleférico, linking La Paz with El Alto on the plateau above, and every station has both a Spanish and an Aymara name.
Q 02La Paz puts young people on its streets dressed as which animals to teach road rules to drivers?
Zebras
Zebras in full costume dance through the streets of La Paz to make drivers and pedestrians aware of traffic rules, turning road safety into street theatre.
Q 03The Witches' Market in La Paz is famous for selling the dried fetuses of which animal as offerings to Pachamama?
Llama
Llama fetuses top a bundle of herbs and sweets that is burned for Pachamama, the earth mother; one popular ceremony asks her to keep the builders of a new home safe.
Q 04San Pedro in La Paz, where residents buy their own rooms and tourists once took tours, is what kind of place?
A prison
A prison in name, San Pedro runs like a walled town: inmates buy or rent their cells, hold jobs inside and often live with their families.
Q 05Which grim nickname did the cliff-edge route from La Paz to the Yungas valleys earn for its crash record?
Death Road
Death Road once claimed 200 to 300 lives a year; a modern highway now carries the traffic, and about 25,000 tourists a year visit the old route, many of them on mountain bikes.
Q 06In El Alto, above La Paz, indigenous women known as cholitas perform which sport in layered skirts?
Wrestling
Wrestling shows by the Fighting Cholitas fill an El Alto arena every Sunday; the act began as a publicity idea from the wrestler who ran the troupe.
Q 07In 2014 the clock on Bolivia's congress building in La Paz was altered to do what unusual thing?
Run backwards
Run backwards is what it now does: the hands turn left and the numerals are reversed, a change the foreign minister dubbed the clock of the south.
Q 08Which soccer legend was coaching Argentina when Bolivia beat them 6–1 in the thin air of La Paz in 2009?
Diego Maradona
Diego Maradona had spoken out two years earlier against a ban on internationals in La Paz; the 6–1 loss equalled Argentina's worst-ever margin of defeat.
Q 09La Paz is the world's highest seat of government, but which city remains Bolivia's constitutional capital?
Sucre
Sucre kept the title and the top courts after a civil war at the end of the 1800s, while the president and congress settled in La Paz.
Q 10Chacaltaya near La Paz had the world's highest lift-served ski area until what vanished by 2009?
Its glacier
Its glacier, up to 18,000 years old, melted away completely by 2009, six years earlier than scientists had predicted.
Q 11Which snow-capped mountain towers over La Paz and is revered in Andean tradition as the city's guardian?
Illimani
Illimani is the highest peak of the Cordillera Real and the second-highest in Bolivia, and its snowy summits can be seen from much of the city.
Q 12What does El Alto International Airport, serving La Paz, supply to arriving passengers who feel unwell?
Oxygen
Oxygen is on hand because the airport sits at about 4,060 metres, the highest international airport in the world, where even big jets cannot take off fully loaded.
Q 13Which independence leader, hanged by the Spanish in 1810, gives his name to the main government square of La Paz?
Pedro Murillo
Q 21Which metal's mining boom near Oruro helped pull Bolivia's seat of government to La Paz around 1898?
Tin
Tin overtook the country's worn-out silver mines as the main source of wealth, shifting money and political power toward La Paz.
Q 22Which style of hat, worn undersized and balanced on top of the head, is a trademark of La Paz's cholitas?
Bowler
Bowler hats in La Paz are deliberately small, and by tradition the angle says whether the wearer is married or single: straight for married, tilted for single.
Q 23Which baked pastry, a mid-morning tradition in La Paz, hides a stew that is solid when filled and melts in the oven?
Salteña
Salteña fillings are set with gelatin so they go in solid and turn to hot juice as they bake; vendors start early and most sell out by mid-morning.
Pedro Murillo led the La Paz uprising of 16 July 1809, one of the first open revolts against Spain in South America, and was executed in the very plaza that now bears his name.
Q 14Which Aymara rebel leader besieged Spanish-held La Paz for months in 1781 with an army of some 40,000?
Túpac Katari
Túpac Katari ran the siege from El Alto with his wife Bartolina Sisa, a commander in her own right; both were captured and executed after it was broken.
Q 15Rebels gave the old presidential palace in La Paz its lasting nickname in 1875 by doing what to the building?
Setting it on fire
Setting it on fire, after failing to storm it, left the building almost in ruins; it has been known as the Palacio Quemado, the Burnt Palace, ever since.
Q 16What is unusual about the houses, cars and banknotes that shoppers buy at the Alasitas fair in La Paz?
They are miniatures
They are miniatures, bought and blessed in the hope that the full-size wish comes true; UNESCO added the fair's ritual journeys to its heritage list in 2017.
Q 17The main bus terminal of La Paz, built as a railway station in the 1910s, is credited to which French engineer?
Gustave Eiffel
Gustave Eiffel is credited with the design; its metal frame was shipped from Pittsburgh, and the hall served trains and then customs before becoming a bus station in 1980.
Q 18Which astronaut is said to have given the eroded Valle de la Luna near La Paz its name?
Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong is credited in local tradition with comparing its clay spires to the Moon, though the story is undocumented; the shapes come from the erosion of soft clay and sandstone.
Q 19Unlike most hillside cities, where in the steep canyon of La Paz do the wealthiest residents tend to live?
At the bottom
At the bottom the climate is milder: the affluent Zona Sur lies several hundred metres below the centre, while poorer districts climb the surrounding hills.
Q 20Each November, families in La Paz carry which human remains to the General Cemetery to be honoured with gifts?
Skulls
Skulls known as ñatitas are kept in home shrines as protectors, then honoured on 8 November with music, flower petals, cigarettes and alcohol.
Q 24Which Bolivian beer takes its name from the Spanish word for a person or thing from La Paz?
Paceña
Paceña comes from a La Paz brewery whose roots go back to 1877, and the name stuck as the beer spread from the city to the rest of the country.
Q 25Which 1988 film tells the story of La Paz-born math teacher Jaime Escalante and his Los Angeles calculus class?
Stand and Deliver
Stand and Deliver cast Edward James Olmos as Escalante, who had taught math and physics in Bolivia for 12 years before moving to the United States.
Q 26Which vast lake northwest of La Paz, shared with Peru, is often called the highest navigable lake in the world?
Titicaca
Lake Titicaca lies about 3,800 metres above sea level; its eastern side falls within the department of La Paz, and the western part belongs to Peru's Puno region.
Q 27The name La Paz marks the peace that followed a rebellion against Peru's first viceroy led by which conquistador?
Gonzalo Pizarro
Gonzalo Pizarro, half-brother of the conqueror of the Incas, rose against the first viceroy of Peru; after his defeat in 1548 the new city was named Nuestra Señora de La Paz, Our Lady of Peace.
Q 28Which La Paz festival, held around Trinity Sunday, sends some 40,000 dancing devotees parading through the streets?
Gran Poder
Gran Poder brings together dozens of dance fraternities and thousands of musicians, opening with the Morenos, its signature dance; UNESCO listed it as intangible heritage in 2019.
Q 29Which governing body ruled in 2007 that the Hernando Siles stadium in La Paz was too high for World Cup qualifiers?
FIFA
FIFA set a limit of 2,500 metres, gave the stadium an exemption a month later after protests from Bolivia's president among others, and scrapped the rule entirely in 2008.
Q 30Which plant's leaves are brewed into the tea offered to new arrivals in La Paz to ease altitude sickness?
Coca
Coca tea, known as mate de coca, is the customary welcome for visitors feeling the height, though its effect on the sickness has never been systematically studied.