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60 free Moscow trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Moscow was a minor border town in 1147, a burned ruin in 1571 and 1812, and the capital of two empires. This quiz covers that arc: the first tsar, Peter the Great taking the capital away and Lenin bringing it back, Napoleon's fire, the 1941 defence, the boycotted 1980 Olympics and the 2018 World Cup final. Most of the questions are about the places visitors actually see. Inside the Kremlin: Italian-built walls, four cathedrals and the red stars that replaced the eagles. On Red Square: why 'red' meant beautiful, Saint Basil's nine domes and the blinded-architect legend, Lenin's Mausoleum and GUM. Beyond: the Bolshoi and Swan Lake, the Metro's chandeliers and Europe's longest escalators, the Ostankino Tower, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour that became a swimming pool, the Seven Sisters, Gorky Park and Elk Island. Easy questions ask which river the city stands on and what a Muscovite is; hard ones want the length of Red Square, the meaning of Losiny Ostrov and the pre-Soviet name of GUM. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our Russia and Saint Petersburg quizzes next.
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Q 01Moscow stands on the banks of which river, from which the city takes its name?
The Moskva
The name may come from an old Balto-Slavic root meaning 'wet' or 'marshy'; 49 bridges cross the river and its canals inside the city limits.
Q 02Under which year is Moscow first mentioned in the chronicles, as a meeting place of Yuri Dolgorukiy?
1147
It was then a minor border town of Rostov-Suzdal; the 800th anniversary was marked with a special medal in 1947.
Q 03What is the English demonym for a resident of Moscow?
Muscovite
The city is also one of twelve Soviet Hero Cities and has long carried the epithet 'the third Rome'.
Q 04In which year was Ivan the Terrible crowned in Moscow as the first tsar of all Russia?
1547
That same year fires destroyed much of the town, and in 1571 Crimean Tatars burned everything except the Kremlin.
Q 05Which ruler moved the Russian capital away from Moscow to a newly built city on the Baltic in 1712?
Peter the Great
Moscow's population fell from 200,000 to 130,000 by 1750 before growing tenfold over the rest of the imperial era.
Q 06Who moved the capital back to Moscow on 12 March 1918?
Vladimir Lenin
Fearing invasion, he brought the government from Petrograd and the Kremlin once again became the seat of power.
Q 07What chiefly caused the 1812 Moscow fire during Napoleon's occupation?
Russian sabotage
Muscovites had been evacuated first; the Grande Armée was forced to retreat and was nearly annihilated by the winter.
Q 08In 1937 letters proposed renaming Moscow after Stalin as 'Stalindar' or 'Stalinodar'; what happened?
The leader himself rejected it
Stalin's remodelling of the city was less modest, bulldozing landmarks such as the Sukharev Tower for ten-lane avenues.
Q 09Moscow hosted the Summer Olympics in which year, amid a boycott led by the United States?
1980
The boycott followed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; the yachting events were held far away in Tallinn.
Q 10Which Moscow stadium, the largest in the city, hosted the 2018 FIFA World Cup final?
Luzhniki
It also staged the boycotted Olympics and the 2008 Champions League final, and a 2018 cable car links it to Sparrow Hills in five minutes.
Q 11Which Moscow club became the first Russian football team to win a UEFA competition, lifting the UEFA Cup?
CSKA
In Soviet times CSKA represented the Armed Forces and Dinamo the Interior Ministry, so both were lavishly funded.
Q 12By 2018, which club had won more Russian Premier League titles than any other?
Spartak
Spartak took ten of the first 26 Russian titles; its ice-hockey namesake and HC Dynamo Moscow, the second most titled Soviet team, keep the rivalries alive on the rink.
Q 13The Moscow Metro, celebrated for its chandeliers and mosaics, opened in which year?
1935
Lazar Kaganovich ran the project, and British engineers from the London Underground who advised on it were later arrested for espionage and deported.
Q 21Under which prince did white limestone walls replace the Kremlin's oak palisade?
Dmitri Donskoi
Those 1366–68 walls withstood a siege by Khan Tokhtamysh; the same prince won the Battle of Kulikovo against the Mongols in 1380.
Q 22How many cathedrals stand inside the Kremlin walls?
Four
Along with five palaces, they occupy an irregular triangle of 275,000 square metres bounded by the river, Red Square and the Alexander Garden.
Q 23After the Revolution, the golden eagles on the Kremlin towers were replaced by what?
Illuminated red stars
The wall beside Lenin's tomb became the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, where Stalin was reburied in 1961.
Q 14Park Pobedy station, 84 metres below ground, boasts the longest what in Europe?
Escalators
The system is among the deepest in the world; its stations began as themed art installations, Elektrozavodskaya even honouring a nearby lightbulb factory.
Q 15Roughly how many passengers does the Moscow Metro carry each day, making it the busiest in Europe?
10 million
That is about 300 million rides a month; a new circle line opened in 2016 to relieve the overloaded Koltsevaya ring.
Q 16Moscow's ten mainline railway terminals are known by what Russian word?
Vokzals
Belorussky, Kazansky, Kiyevsky, Kursky, Leningradsky, Paveletsky, Rizhsky, Savyolovsky, Yaroslavsky and Vostochny are each named for the direction they serve.
Q 17Which was Moscow's main international airport, expanded with a new terminal for the Olympic Games?
Sheremetyevo
Five commercial airports now serve the city, including Vnukovo and Ostafyevo.
Q 18The Moscow Ring Road that opened in 1961 and long marked the city boundary is known by which acronym?
MKAD
Its 109 km of road ran right around the city; suburbs beyond it were only incorporated in the 1980s.
Q 19The word 'kremlin' means what in Russian?
A fortress within a city
Many Russian cities have one, but Moscow's is so famous that 'the Kremlin' became shorthand for the government itself.
Q 20Masters from which country built the Kremlin's present brick walls and towers in 1485–95?
Italy
Ivan III wanted a capital worthy of Constantinople; Pietro Antonio Solari designed the wall and towers and Marco Ruffo the prince's palace.
Q 24The word 'krasnaya' in Red Square's Russian name originally meant what?
Beautiful
The modern word for beautiful, krasivaya, derives from it; before the name spread the square was called Pozhar, the 'burnt-out place'.
Q 25Red Square is roughly how long?
330 m
It is about 70 metres wide and almost rectangular; a moat once separating it from the Kremlin was paved over in 1812.
Q 26Ivan the Terrible built Saint Basil's Cathedral to commemorate the capture of which two cities?
Kazan and Astrakhan
Ivan raised a wooden church after every victory of the Kazan war, and by the end of the Astrakhan campaign the site held a cluster of seven of them.
Q 27How many onion domes crown Saint Basil's Cathedral?
Nine
Each dome tops a separate church clustered around a central chapel; a tenth chapel was added in 1588 over the grave of Vasily the Blessed himself.
Q 28By legend, what did Ivan the Terrible do to Saint Basil's architect so it could never be repeated?
Had him blinded
Historians call it a myth: the same builder later worked on the Cathedral of the Annunciation and the walls of the Kazan Kremlin.
Q 29What is the official name of the church commonly called Saint Basil's?
Cathedral of the Intercession on the Moat
It has been run as a division of the State Historical Museum since 1928, though weekly services resumed in 1997.
Q 30The tomb on Red Square where Lenin's embalmed body lies was designed by which architect?
Alexey Shchusev
He drew on the Step Pyramid and the Tomb of Cyrus; the first wooden version was ready just six days after Lenin died in January 1924.