Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
This landmark trivia quiz has 59 free questions with answers and tours the world's most famous structures and monuments: the New Seven Wonders, ancient sites like Stonehenge, the Acropolis and Angkor Wat, and modern icons from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Burj Khalifa. Questions cover who built each landmark and when, how tall or old it is, the odd stories behind them (a bus jumping Tower Bridge, a hydrant patent lost in a fire, a Hollywood sign that was really an advert) and what makes each one unusual. It suits pub quiz rounds, geography classrooms and travel-obsessed families: the early questions are easy for anyone who has seen a postcard, and the later ones reward people who read the plaques. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries and official sources before publishing, so the answer key holds up under argument.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from the people of which country?
France
France gave the statue to mark the two nations' friendship: Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted it, Gustave Eiffel engineered the iron frame, and it was dedicated in New York Harbor on 28 October 1886.
Q 02What colour was the Statue of Liberty when it was first unveiled?
Reddish-brown copper
At her 1886 dedication the statue was the dull reddish-brown copper colour of her new skin; oxidation turned it the familiar green patina over roughly the next thirty years.
Q 03How many rays does the crown of the Statue of Liberty have?
Seven
They are usually said to stand for the seven continents and seven seas; broken chains lie at her feet.
Q 04Roughly how long is the Great Wall of China when all its sections are counted?
About 21,000 km
A 2012 Chinese state survey measured every known section, built across many dynasties, at about 21,000 km (21,196 km); the famous Ming-era stretches near Beijing are only a fraction of that.
Q 05The Taj Mahal was built by Shah Jahan as a tomb for whom?
His wife
His wife Mumtaz Mahal died in 1631 giving birth to their 14th child; Shah Jahan had the white-marble mausoleum built for her at Agra, with some 20,000 workers on the project.
Q 06Why were the Taj Mahal's four minarets built leaning slightly outward?
To fall away from the tomb in an earthquake
The minarets lean slightly outward so that in an earthquake they would fall away from the tomb rather than onto it; each stands about 40 metres tall at the corners of the marble plinth.
Q 07Which Roman emperor began building the Colosseum in AD 72?
Vespasian
Vespasian began the amphitheatre around AD 72 on the site of Nero's Golden House lake; his son Titus opened it in AD 80, and the name Flavian Amphitheatre comes from their dynasty.
Q 08What was the hypogeum of the Colosseum?
An underground maze of tunnels and cages
The hypogeum was an underground maze of tunnels and cages beneath the arena floor, added under Domitian, where animals and gladiators waited before being hoisted up through trapdoors.
Q 09Machu Picchu was built around 1450 as an estate for which Inca emperor?
Pachacuti
Pachacuti, the ninth Sapa Inca who expanded the empire from Cusco, had the estate built around 1450; its dry-stone walls at 2,430 metres were fitted without mortar.
Q 10Which American explorer brought Machu Picchu to international attention in 1911?
Hiram Bingham
Yale lecturer Hiram Bingham reached the ruins on 24 July 1911 and publicised them through National Geographic in 1913; local farmer Agustín Lizárraga had visited and left his name there in 1902.
Q 11Petra, the 'Rose City' carved into sandstone cliffs, is in which country?
Jordan
Petra lies in southern Jordan, about 240 km south of Amman; it was the Nabataean capital, and its Treasury (Al-Khazneh) facade appears in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
Q 12Which traveller rediscovered Petra for the Western world in 1812?
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, travelling in disguise as 'Sheikh Ibrahim', persuaded a local guide to lead him through the Siq gorge to Petra on 22 August 1812; he went on to reach Abu Simbel the next year.
Q 13Christ the Redeemer stands on top of which mountain in Rio de Janeiro?
Corcovado
Q 21Which four presidents are carved into Mount Rushmore?
Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln
Gutzon Borglum carved Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln, chosen for the nation's founding, expansion, development and preservation; the 60-foot heads were to continue to the waist before money ran out in 1941.
Q 22How many workers died carving Mount Rushmore between 1927 and 1941?
None
None of the roughly 400 workers died during the carving, even though about 90% of the rock was removed with dynamite; the Lakota call the mountain Six Grandfathers.
Q 23The Burj Khalifa was known by what name during its construction?
The statue crowns the 710-metre Corcovado mountain in the Tijuca Forest; the 30-metre Art Deco figure, finished in 1931, is reinforced concrete faced with soapstone.
Q 14How wide is the arm span of Rio's Christ the Redeemer statue?
28 metres
The outstretched arms span 28 metres on a statue 30 metres tall (38 with its pedestal); Paul Landowski designed it and engineer Heitor da Silva Costa built it between 1922 and 1931.
Q 15At Chichen Itza, what shape does the equinox shadow on El Castillo appear to form?
A serpent
At the equinoxes the stepped corners of El Castillo cast a zigzag shadow that joins the carved stone head at the stairway's base, forming the body of a serpent, the feathered-serpent god Kukulcán.
Q 16Strictly speaking, 'Big Ben' is the name of what?
The Great Bell inside it
The tower itself was renamed Elizabeth Tower in 2012 for the Diamond Jubilee, and it leans slightly to the north-west.
Q 17The Danish architect of the Sydney Opera House, Jørn Utzon, did what in 1966?
Resigned and never returned to see it finished
The building on Bennelong Point finally opened in 1973, about 1,357% over budget in real terms; Utzon got his Pritzker in 2003.
Q 18Who officially opened the Sydney Opera House on 20 October 1973?
Queen Elizabeth II
Queen Elizabeth II opened the Sydney Opera House on 20 October 1973; its roof carries more than one million self-cleaning Swedish-made tiles laid in chevron patterns.
Q 19What is the official name of the Golden Gate Bridge's colour?
International Orange
Consulting architect Irving Morrow chose International Orange because it complemented the headlands and stood out against fog; the bridge opened to pedestrians on 27 May 1937.
Q 20Workers saved by the Golden Gate Bridge's safety net during construction formed which group?
The Half Way to Hell Club
The 19 men caught by the safety net Joseph Strauss had slung beneath the deck called themselves the Half Way to Hell Club; the net failed in February 1937 when a scaffold fell through it, killing ten.
Burj Dubai
Built as Burj Dubai from 2004, the tower was renamed Burj Khalifa at its opening on 4 January 2010 in honour of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, the UAE president whose Abu Dhabi had bailed out Dubai's debts.
Q 24How tall is the Burj Khalifa?
828 metres
Burj Khalifa rises 828 metres (2,717 feet) over 163 floors, the tallest structure ever built when it opened in January 2010; it houses the Armani Hotel on its lower floors.
Q 25The world's largest religious complex, in Cambodia, was originally dedicated to which Hindu god?
Vishnu
Suryavarman II built Angkor Wat in the early 12th century as a temple to Vishnu; an eight-armed Vishnu statue from the site stands in its western entrance, and the temple later became Buddhist.
Q 26Unlike most Khmer temples, Cambodia's great 12th-century temple faces which direction?
West
Angkor Wat faces west, the direction linked with Vishnu and with death, which is why scholars suggest it was Suryavarman II's funerary temple; most Khmer temples face east toward the sunrise.
Q 27Stonehenge's smaller 'bluestones' were hauled from the Preseli Hills in which country?
Wales
The Preseli Hills lie in Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales, about 225 km from Salisbury Plain; a 2024 study traced the Altar Stone even farther, to the Orcadian Basin of north-east Scotland.
Q 28Stonehenge is aligned to the sunrise on which day of the year?
The summer solstice
The monument's axis points toward the Heel Stone and the summer solstice sunrise, and in the opposite direction to the winter solstice sunset; building went on in phases from about 3000 BC to 1600 BC.
Q 29The Leaning Tower of Pisa began tilting in 1178 while builders were on which floor?
The second
The tower began to sink in 1178 while work was on the second floor, its three-metre foundation set in soft clay and sand; construction paused for nearly a century, and engineers reduced the lean to under four degrees by 2001.
Q 30The famous leaning structure in Pisa is actually what kind of building?
A bell tower
It is the bell tower (campanile) of Pisa Cathedral, begun in 1173 as the third structure of the Piazza dei Miracoli; seven bells hang at the top, reached by nearly 300 steps.