Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
This Paris trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the city from Roman Lutetia to the 2024 Olympics: the Eiffel Tower and why it was never torn down, the Louvre and the theft of the Mona Lisa, Notre-Dame's fire and reopening, Haussmann's boulevards, the Commune, the Liberation, the Métro's Art Nouveau entrances, the six million skeletons under the streets, and the croissants and baguettes that keep the city fed. The first questions are easy enough for anyone who has walked the Champs-Élysées once; the last ones will stretch people who have lived there. Every question is multiple choice with a short explanation after you answer, so it works as a solo challenge or a ready-made round for a trivia night. Every answer has been checked against a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Paris sits on which river?
Seine
The river rises near Dijon and reaches the English Channel at Le Havre, 777 km later.
Q 02How many arrondissements (districts) is the city of Paris divided into?
20
They spiral outward clockwise from the centre like a snail shell, and the number ends every Paris postcode.
Q 03Paris's nickname 'City of Light' is partly a nod to its role in which era?
The Age of Enlightenment
It has been a world capital of finance, fashion and gastronomy since the 17th century.
Q 04What was the Roman name for the town that became Paris?
Lutetia
The Parisii, a Gallic tribe, had settled the site around the middle of the third century BC.
Q 05Which Frankish king made Paris his capital from 508?
Clovis
He was the first king of the Merovingian dynasty.
Q 06The Eiffel Tower was built as the centrepiece of an 1889 exposition marking the centenary of what?
The French Revolution
Leading artists signed a protest against the 'useless and monstrous' tower before it opened.
Q 07How tall is the Eiffel Tower, including its aerial?
330 metres
It was the tallest structure in the world for 41 years until the Chrysler Building was finished in 1930.
Q 08The Eiffel Tower was due to be dismantled in 1909. What saved it?
Its value for radio telegraphy
By 1910 it was beaming the time to ships within 5,000 km as part of the International Time Service.
Q 09Austrian tailor Franz Reichelt died jumping from the Eiffel Tower in 1912 while testing what?
A parachute suit
Two years earlier a priest measuring radiation up the tower had accidentally discovered cosmic rays.
Q 10The Louvre opened as a museum in 1793 with an exhibition of how many paintings?
537
Most were royal property or confiscated from the church during the Revolution.
Q 11Which French king converted the medieval Louvre fortress into the primary royal residence in 1546?
Francis I
Louis XIV later abandoned it for Versailles in 1682, leaving the Louvre to house the royal collection.
Q 12Who stole the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911?
Vincenzo Peruggia
Apollinaire and Picasso were both questioned; the real thief kept it in his flat for two years before trying to sell it in Florence.
Q 13Construction of Notre-Dame cathedral began in 1163 under which bishop of Paris?
Maurice de Sully
King Louis VII and Pope Alexander III were present when the cornerstone was laid.
Q 21Who designed the Paris Métro's famous Art Nouveau station entrances?
Hector Guimard
Bienvenüe was the engineer whose ten-line plan the city adopted in 1896.
Q 22The Catacombs of Paris hold the remains of roughly how many people?
6 million
Bones were moved there in nightly wagon processions from 1788 after overflowing cemeteries caused basement walls to collapse.
Q 23Père Lachaise Cemetery, resting place of Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde, opened in which year?
1804
Napoleon established it, declaring that every citizen had the right to burial regardless of race or religion.
Q 14Notre-Dame stands on which island in the Seine?
Île de la Cité
The island was the birthplace of Paris and the heart of the medieval city.
Q 15Which 1831 novel about a hunchbacked bell-ringer prompted the cathedral's 19th-century restoration?
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
The restoration was supervised by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who added the spire that fell in 2019.
Q 16After the April 2019 fire, in which month and year did Notre-Dame formally reopen?
December 2024
The restoration cost an estimated $739 million and the Crown of Thorns returned days later.
Q 17Napoleon commissioned the Arc de Triomphe in 1806 after which victory?
Austerlitz
It was not finished until 1836, long after his fall.
Q 18In August 1919 pilot Charles Godefroy did what at the Arc de Triomphe?
Flew a biplane through it
The stunt, filmed for newsreels, came three weeks after the WWI victory parade.
Q 19How many avenues radiate from the Arc de Triomphe, giving its square the old name Place de l'Étoile?
Twelve
The arch straddles three arrondissements at once: the 8th, 16th and 17th.
Q 20The first Paris Métro line opened in July 1900 during which event?
The World's Fair
Hector Guimard's Art Nouveau entrances became a symbol of the city; 86 survive.
Q 24Sacré-Cœur was proposed after France's defeat in which war?
Franco-Prussian War
Its hilltop site overlooking the Commune's stronghold still makes it controversial on the French left.
Q 25Sacré-Cœur stays brilliant white because its Château-Landon travertine does what when it rains?
Exudes calcite
Construction took forty years under five architects; it was consecrated only in 1919.
Q 26Which hill in the 18th arrondissement was home to Picasso, Renoir and Van Gogh in the Belle Époque?
Montmartre
The Jesuit order was founded there in 1534 when Ignatius of Loyola and companions took their vows.
Q 27The Panthéon was originally built as a church dedicated to which patron of Paris?
Genevieve
The Revolution turned it into a mausoleum in 1791; Voltaire's ashes arrived that July.
Q 28Who was the first person entombed in the Panthéon after it was returned to mausoleum use in 1881?
Victor Hugo
Zola followed in 1908 and Resistance leader Jean Moulin under de Gaulle.
Q 29Who directed the boulevards, parks and sewers programme that gave Paris its modern look in 1853-70?
Georges-Eugène Haussmann
Emperor Napoleon III commissioned the work and then dismissed him in 1870.
Q 30The Paris Commune of 1871 governed the city for roughly how long before its bloody suppression?
Two months
It was crushed during the 'semaine sanglante' beginning 21 May 1871.