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47 free Lithuania trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Lithuania was once the largest country in Europe, the last pagan state on the continent, and the first Soviet republic to break away. It speaks the most conservative living Indo-European language, worships basketball, eats dumplings named after airships, has a hill covered in a hundred thousand crosses and a bohemian district that declared itself a republic on April Fools' Day. This Lithuania trivia quiz covers all of it. Forty-seven questions run from geography (Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, the Nemunas, Aukštojas Hill, the Curonian Spit, the centre of Europe) through history (Mindaugas and 1253, Gediminas and the Iron Wolf, Grunwald, the Union of Lublin, the partitions, the press ban, 16 February 1918, Smetona, the Soviet and Nazi occupations, the Forest Brothers, Sąjūdis, 11 March 1990, the January Events, NATO and the euro) to culture and sport (the flag and Vytis, Lithuanian and Latvian, Catholicism, Čiurlionis, cepelinai and šaltibarščiai, Užupis, the Hill of Crosses, Sabonis and Žalgiris, Alekna and Meilutytė). Roughly a third are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who really know the Baltics. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and official pages, so the dates, numbers and names are ones you can rely on.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Lithuania?
Vilnius
Vilnius is Lithuania's capital and largest city; its Old Town, one of the largest surviving medieval old towns in Northern Europe, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.
Q 02Who united the Lithuanian lands and was crowned the first and only King of Lithuania in 1253?
Mindaugas
Mindaugas was crowned Lithuania's first and only king on 6 July 1253, a date Lithuania observes as Statehood Day; after his assassination in 1263 the country reverted to paganism.
Q 03At its 15th-century peak, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania held what distinction?
Largest country in Europe
Under Vytautas the Great the Grand Duchy of Lithuania reached its greatest extent around 1430, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea as the largest country in Europe.
Q 04Which grand duke is credited with founding the capital after dreaming of an iron wolf on a hill?
Gediminas
Gediminas, grand duke from about 1316 to 1341, is credited in legend with founding Vilnius after dreaming of a howling iron wolf; his Gediminid descendants later ruled Poland, Hungary and Bohemia.
Q 05At which 1410 battle did Polish–Lithuanian forces under Jogaila and Vytautas crush the Teutonic Order?
Grunwald
The Battle of Grunwald, Žalgiris to Lithuanians, was fought on 15 July 1410; Grand Master Ulrich von Jungingen died on the field and the Teutonic Order never recovered its dominance.
Q 06Lithuania was officially Christianised in which year, making it the last pagan state in Europe to convert?
1387
Lithuania's official Christianisation came in 1387, the year after Jogaila's baptism and coronation as King of Poland; the Samogitian region followed only in 1413.
Q 07The 1569 union that created the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was signed in which city?
Lublin
The Union of Lublin was signed in Lublin on 1 July 1569 under pressure from Sigismund II Augustus; Lithuania kept its own laws, treasury and army within the joint state.
Q 08The 3 May 1791 constitution is usually ranked as the world's what modern written constitution?
Second
The Constitution of 3 May 1791 is usually ranked as Europe's first and the world's second modern written constitution, after the United States' of 1787; the Third Partition erased the Commonwealth in 1795.
Q 09Which power annexed most of Lithuania in the partitions completed in 1795?
Russia
Prussia took the Užnemunė region; the Kościuszko Uprising and a brief recapture of Vilnius in 1794 had failed.
Q 10After the 1863 uprising, Tsarist authorities imposed what measure against the local culture?
A ban on the Lithuanian press
The Lithuanian press ban of 1864 to 1904 outlawed printing Lithuanian in the Latin alphabet; book smugglers known as knygnešiai defied it, and it helped spark the Lithuanian National Revival.
Q 11On what date in 1918 did the Council of Lithuania sign the Act of Independence?
16 February
The Council of Lithuania signed the Act of Independence in Vilnius on 16 February 1918, proclaiming a democratic state; the date is kept as Lithuania's State Restoration Day.
Q 12Which city served as Lithuania's temporary capital between the wars after Poland seized the historic one?
Kaunas
Kaunas served as the temporary capital from 1920 to 1939 after Żeligowski's mutiny of October 1920 set up a puppet Central Lithuania around Vilnius, which Poland absorbed in 1922.
Q 13Who led the authoritarian regime installed by Lithuania's 1926 coup?
Antanas Smetona
Q 21What are the three colours of Lithuania's flag, top to bottom?
Yellow, green, red
The tricolour is yellow, green and red from top to bottom, often read as sun, forests and the blood of patriots; adopted on 25 April 1918, its ratio changed from 1:2 to 3:5 in 2004.
Q 22Lithuania's coat of arms, an armoured knight on horseback, is known by what name?
Vytis
Vytis, the charging knight with sword and shield, has represented Lithuania since the late 14th century, appearing on a seal of Grand Duke Algirdas in 1366, and was restored as the state arms in 1990.
Q 23Lithuanian is considered the most conservative living language of which family?
Indo-European
Antanas Smetona was made president after the December 1926 coup and ruled until the Soviet occupation of June 1940; his government tried Memel Nazis in Kaunas in the 1934-35 Neumann-Sass case.
Q 14Of roughly 220,000 Jews living in Lithuania in June 1941, how many were killed in the Holocaust?
Almost all
Almost all were killed: roughly 195,000 of Lithuania's Jews, more than 90 per cent, were murdered by 1944, mostly in mass shootings at sites such as Ponary and Kaunas's Ninth Fort.
Q 15Organised Lithuanian partisan resistance to Soviet rule was effectively crushed in which year?
1953
Organised partisan warfare was effectively crushed by 1953, when commander Jonas Žemaitis was captured; he was executed in 1954 and his successor Adolfas Ramanauskas in 1957, though isolated fighters held out into the 1960s.
Q 16How many civilians were killed by Soviet forces in the capital during the January Events of 1991?
14
14 civilians died when Soviet troops stormed the Vilnius TV tower and broadcasting centre on 13 January 1991, and about 700 were injured; the Medininkai border-post massacre that July killed seven officers.
Q 17Which movement, founded in the late 1980s, led Lithuania's drive to restore independence?
Sąjūdis
Sąjūdis, the Reform Movement of Lithuania founded in June 1988 and chaired by Vytautas Landsbergis, won the 1990 elections and drove the 11 March declaration; it helped organise the Baltic Way human chain of August 1989.
Q 18Who became Lithuania's first directly elected president after independence, in 1993?
Algirdas Brazauskas
Algirdas Brazauskas, the former Communist Party leader, won the February 1993 election to become Lithuania's first directly elected president; the last Russian troops withdrew on 31 August 1993.
Q 19Lithuania joined NATO and the European Union in which year?
2004
Lithuania joined NATO on 29 March 2004 and the European Union on 1 May 2004 alongside Latvia and Estonia; it entered the Schengen Area in December 2007.
Q 20Lithuania replaced its litas with the euro on 1 January of which year?
2015
Lithuania adopted the euro on 1 January 2015, the last of the three Baltic states to do so; the litas, reintroduced in June 1993, was exchanged at 3.4528 to the euro.
It retains many features of Proto-Indo-European and is closely related to Latvian, though the two are not mutually intelligible.
Q 24What is Lithuania's highest point, at 294 m?
Aukštojas Hill
Aukštojas Hill, measured at 293.84 m in 2004, replaced neighbouring Juozapinė Hill (292.7 m) as Lithuania's highest point; both lie in the Medininkai Highlands south-east of Vilnius.
Q 25What is the longest river in Lithuania?
Nemunas
The Nemunas, roughly 900 km long with some 475 km inside Lithuania, is the country's main river, flowing past Kaunas into the Curonian Lagoon; its delta forms a regional park rich in birdlife.
Q 26Where did a 1989 calculation by France's national geographic institute place the centre of Europe?
26 km north of Vilnius
Jean-George Affholder of France's IGN computed the centre of Europe in 1989 at 54°54′N 25°19′E, about 26 km north of Vilnius near the village of Purnuškės, where a monument marks the spot.
Q 27Which river flows through the centre of Vilnius?
Neris
The Neris runs through the heart of Vilnius below Gediminas Hill and joins the Nemunas at Kaunas; at about 510 km it is the Nemunas's largest tributary.
Q 28Which Russian exclave borders Lithuania to the south-west?
Kaliningrad Oblast
Kaliningrad Oblast, the Russian exclave that was German East Prussia until 1945, borders Lithuania along the lower Nemunas and the Curonian Spit; Lithuania's other neighbours are Latvia, Belarus and Poland.
Q 29The Hill of Crosses, a pilgrimage site near Šiauliai, held roughly how many crosses by 2006?
100,000
Estimates put about 100,000 crosses on the hill by 2006, up from some 55,000 in 1990; the first were probably planted after the 1831 uprising, and Soviet bulldozers levelled the site repeatedly from 1961.
Q 30Trakai Island Castle, completed around 1409, stands on an island in which body of water?
Lake Galvė
Trakai Island Castle stands on an island in Lake Galvė, west of Vilnius; Kęstutis began it in the 14th century and his son Vytautas the Great completed it around 1409 and died at Trakai in 1430.