Malta Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
55 free Malta trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Malta is a speck in the central Mediterranean, 80 km south of Sicily, that has been fought over by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, Aragonese, the Knights of St John, Napoleon and the British. It now has the EU's smallest capital, its own Semitic language written in the Latin alphabet, and a flag carrying a British medal. This quiz covers all of it: the three inhabited islands, Valletta and Mdina, the Ġgantija temples that predate the pyramids, St Paul's shipwreck, the Great Siege of 1565, the George Cross of 1942, independence in 1964, the republic of 1974 and the euro in 2008. Culture gets equal weight: the Maltese language and its Siculo-Arabic roots, pastizzi and stuffat tal-fenek, Cisk beer and Kinnie, Caravaggio's Beheading of St John, the village festa and Carnival, driving on the left, and why the Knights paid rent in falcons. Easy questions ask which sea Malta sits in; hard ones want the highest point, the year the Arabs conquered the islands and the name of the national poet. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Malta, Valletta, the Great Siege, the flag and Maltese cuisine, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 55 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Malta lies further south than which of these capital cities?
Tunis
Tunis lies north of every point in Malta: Tunisia's coast reaches so far up the Mediterranean that its capital sits level with Spain's southern shore.
Q 02What is the capital of Malta?
Valletta
Valletta was built from scratch by the Knights after the siege of 1565 to fortify their hold on the island, and fewer than 6,000 people live in it today.
Q 03Besides Malta itself, which two islands of the archipelago are inhabited?
Gozo and Comino
Gozo and Comino: more than 30,000 people live on Gozo, which legend makes the island where the nymph Calypso held Odysseus, while tiny Comino has only a handful of residents.
Q 04Which two languages does Malta's constitution name as official?
Maltese and English
Maltese and English are both official under the constitution, with Maltese the national language; if the Maltese and English texts of a law conflict, the Maltese version prevails.
Q 05The Maltese language descends from which extinct dialect?
Siculo-Arabic
Siculo-Arabic, the Arabic once spoken in Sicily, died out there after the Norman conquest but lived on in Malta, leaving Maltese as its only surviving descendant.
Q 06Which country is Malta's nearest neighbour?
Italy
Italy is nearest: Sicily lies less than 100 km to the north, and in the Ice Ages elephants and hippos walked to Malta across a land bridge between the two.
Q 07Which biblical figure was shipwrecked on Malta around AD 60, according to the Acts of the Apostles?
St Paul
St Paul, being shipped to Rome for trial, was wrecked on Malta in Acts 27-28, where he healed the father of Publius, the island's chief man, who by tradition became its first bishop.
Q 08The Arabs conquered Malta in 870 from which empire?
Byzantine
Byzantine rule ended when the Aghlabids took Malta in 870, and a later Arab chronicler wrote that the island lay almost empty until Muslim settlers rebuilt its main town around 1048.
Q 09Which Norman leader attacked Malta in 1091 and is credited by legend with the colours of its flag?
Roger I of Sicily
Roger I of Sicily landed in 1091 and took an oath of loyalty and tribute from Malta's Muslim rulers; the tale that he tore a strip from his own banner to give the islanders their colours is a later invention.
Q 10In 1530, Charles V handed Malta to the Knights Hospitaller in return for what yearly tribute?
A falcon
A falcon a year was the only payment Charles V's grant demanded of the Knights, who had been without a home for seven years since the Ottomans drove them from Rhodes.
Q 11Which Grand Master led the Knights through the Great Siege of 1565?
Jean de Valette
Jean de Valette held out against the Ottomans through the summer of 1565, then founded a fortified new city that took his name, though he died in 1568 before it was finished.
Q 12Which Ottoman sultan sent the fleet that besieged Malta in 1565?
Suleiman the Magnificent
Suleiman the Magnificent had driven the Knights from Rhodes in 1522 and let them sail away; when he sent a fleet after them to Malta 43 years later, the siege failed.
Q 13Which fort fell to the Ottomans after holding out for a month of Malta's Great Siege?
St Elmo
Q 21Which country joined the European Union on the same day as Malta?
Cyprus
Cyprus joined on 1 May 2004 with Malta and eight states of central and eastern Europe, and the two islands went on to adopt the euro on the same day in 2008.
Q 22What was Malta's currency before the euro?
The Maltese lira
The Maltese lira, which many English speakers went on calling the pound, was worth more than two euros when the single currency replaced it on 1 January 2008.
Q 23What symbol appears on Malta's €1 and €2 coins?
The Maltese cross
The Maltese cross, the eight-pointed emblem of the Knights, won a public vote to appear on the 1 and 2 euro coins, while a prehistoric temple altar took the three smallest ones.
St Elmo took the brunt of the Ottoman assault and fell on 23 June 1565, yet the forts across the harbour held and the invaders sailed home that September.
Q 14Napoleon seized Malta from the Knights in 1798 while sailing to invade which country?
Egypt
Egypt was the goal: the Knights gave up Malta within days, Napoleon abolished slavery and noble privileges there, and the Maltese rose against the garrison he left behind within three months.
Q 15British rule over Malta was confirmed by an 1814 peace treaty with France, signed in which city?
Paris
Paris settled what an earlier peace could not: the 1802 Treaty of Amiens had told Britain to hand Malta back to the Knights, and its refusal helped restart the war with Napoleon.
Q 16Which award did the British king give to the whole island of Malta in April 1942?
The George Cross
The George Cross went to the whole island on 15 April 1942, when Axis bombers were striking it round the clock, and a picture of the medal has sat on Malta's flag since 1943.
Q 17Which two colours form the vertical halves of Malta's national flag?
White and red
White and red: the wartime medal in the corner first sat on a blue square, which was dropped at independence in 1964 in favour of a thin red outline.
Q 18On independence in 1964, Malta joined which international association?
The Commonwealth
The Commonwealth took Malta in on independence day, 21 September 1964, and Elizabeth II stayed on as Queen of Malta for ten more years until the islands became a republic.
Q 19Which prime minister led Malta to declare itself a republic in 1974?
Dom Mintoff
Dom Mintoff, prime minister from 1971 to 1984, made Malta a republic on 13 December 1974 and saw the last British forces leave in 1979, an exit still marked each 31 March as Freedom Day.
Q 20Which two leaders held the 1989 Malta summit that heralded the Cold War's end?
George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev
George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev met on ships off Marsaxlokk weeks after the Berlin Wall opened, and storms that cancelled sessions earned the talks the nickname 'the Seasick Summit'.
Q 24The highest point in the Maltese islands, only about 250 metres up, stands on which stretch of coast?
Dingli Cliffs
Dingli Cliffs hold the country's highest point at just 253 m, which is lower than the Eiffel Tower, and the islands have no permanent rivers or lakes.
Q 25Malta is the smallest country in the European Union by area; which member state is the next smallest?
Luxembourg
Luxembourg comes next, yet it is about eight times the size of Malta, whose 316 sq km are home to more than half a million people.
Q 26Which hilltop city was Malta's capital in ancient and medieval times?
Mdina
Mdina sat safely inland on its hill, but the seafaring Knights chose a base beside the harbour instead, and the old capital slipped into a long decline.
Q 27On which tectonic plate does Malta sit?
African
African is the plate: Malta is the exposed top of the Pelagian Platform, a shelf of the African plate that formed a land bridge between Sicily and North Africa before sea levels rose.
Q 28Malta is one of only three European Union countries that drive on the left; which of these is another?
Ireland
Ireland, like Malta, kept the habit from its years under British rule; Sweden drove on the left too until one Sunday in 1967, when the whole country switched sides overnight.
Q 29The traditional Maltese fenkata is a meal centred on which meat?
Rabbit
Rabbit is the centrepiece of a fenkata, a communal feast that can run from spaghetti in rabbit sauce to the stew itself, a dish that may have begun as defiance of the Knights' hunting restrictions.
Q 30Pastizzi, Malta's favourite pastry snack, are traditionally filled with ricotta or what?
Curried peas
Curried peas (piżelli) are the other classic filling, and the snack is so loved that Maltese say anything in hot demand 'sells like pastizzi', as English speakers say hot cakes.