Persepolis Trivia
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96 free Persepolis trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Persepolis was the showpiece of the largest empire the world had yet seen, and it burned to the ground during a drunken party. This Persepolis trivia quiz covers the ancient city in depth: who founded it and why, the Apadana with its 72 columns and gold foundation tablets, the Gate of All Nations, the tribute reliefs, the fire of 330 BC and the argument over whether Thaïs really started it, and the centuries of travellers, excavators and shahs who came afterwards. Because many people searching for Persepolis mean Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel and film, the last few questions cover those too, so both audiences get what they came for. Questions run from easy to expert, and every answer is verified and cited to its reference page. If you enjoy this quiz, try our other ancient history and archaeology quizzes.
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Q 01Persepolis was the ceremonial capital of which Persian dynasty?
The Achaemenids
The Achaemenids ran their empire day to day from other, older cities, which may be why the Greeks barely knew this one existed until an invading army reached it.
Q 02In which modern country is Persepolis?
Iran
Iran treats the ruins as a national emblem: their columns and carvings have been copied on stamps, carpets and bank buildings, and one of the country's biggest football clubs is called Persepolis.
Q 03What do Persepolis's clay tablets mostly record?
Wages and rations
Wages and rations fill the tablets: grain, wine and silver handed out to craftsmen from across the empire, with new mothers given extra, twice as much for a boy as for a girl.
Q 04Which conqueror's army took Persepolis in 330 BC?
Alexander the Great
Alexander the Great, by one ancient account, called it 'the most hateful of the cities of Asia' and let his soldiers plunder everything but the palaces, which burned a few months later.
Q 05According to Plutarch and Diodorus, which courtesan urged the burning of Persepolis?
Thaïs
Thaïs is said to have thrown her torch right after the king's own; she was the companion of his general Ptolemy, the future ruler of Egypt.
Q 06What did the burning of Persepolis supposedly avenge?
The Persian destruction of Athens
The Persian destruction of Athens lay 150 years in the past, and one ancient account has a senior general object that the conqueror would only be burning what was now his own property.
Q 07Which festival have many scholars long argued Persepolis was built to celebrate?
Nowruz, the Persian New Year
Nowruz, the Persian New Year, falls at the spring equinox, and many scholars read the site's ceremonial carvings as a record of it; others reply that no text shows the festival being held there.
Q 08What does the Greek name Persepolis mean?
City of the Persians
City of the Persians was a Greek coinage that the builders never used: they called the place by the same name as their homeland and their people.
Q 09Medieval Persians called the site Takht-e Jamshid, meaning what?
Throne of a mythical king
Throne of a mythical king: later Persians had forgotten who built the ruins, so they credited them to Jamshid, a legendary ruler whose demons were said to carry him about on his throne.
Q 10The winged, human-headed bulls guarding Persepolis's Gate of All Nations were borrowed from the art of which earlier empire?
Assyria
Assyria's palace guardians were carved with five legs so that they looked right from both the front and the side; the Persian sculptors dropped the extra one.
Q 11Which Persian king founded Persepolis around 518 BC?
Darius I
Darius I boasts in an inscription beside the original entrance that no fortress had stood on the spot before, and he credits the work to craftsmen from the many nations he ruled.
Q 12Which stone were the columns, stairways and doorframes of Persepolis cut from?
Grey limestone
Grey limestone was used for the parts that still stand; the walls between were mostly mud brick and have crumbled, which is why the ruins are a forest of columns and doorways.
Q 13The terrace of Persepolis was partly built up and partly cut out of what?
A mountainside
A mountainside: the builders cut back the bedrock of a rocky spur, packed the hollows with boulders and rubble, and faced the whole with fitted blocks to make a platform of 125,000 square metres.
Q 21What was found in 2011 at Tol-e Ajori, 3 km west of Persepolis?
A gateway resembling Babylon's Ishtar Gate
A gateway resembling Babylon's Ishtar Gate, with the same glazed-brick beasts, stood here; its excavators think it went up after Persia took Babylon in 539 BC and before work on the great terrace began.
Q 22What was the Apadana used for?
Official audiences of the King of Kings
Official audiences of the King of Kings were held under a roof carried by 72 columns; only 13 still stood in modern times, though the ruins' old nickname, Forty Minarets, recalls a taller skyline.
Q 23Under the corners of the Apadana at Persepolis, excavators found a coin hoard and foundation tablets made of what?
Q 14The Macedonians took the pass before Persepolis by a hidden path, echoing which earlier battle?
Thermopylae
Thermopylae in reverse: this time Persians held the narrow pass against a Greek-led army, and a local guide is said to have shown the invaders the way round.
Q 15Plutarch says the treasure of Persepolis was carried away on 20,000 mules and 5,000 of which other animal?
Camels
Camels were needed because the vaults held two centuries of the kings' savings: another ancient writer puts the hoard at 120,000 talents, reckoned in silver.
Q 16Which animal combat is carved again and again on the stairways of Persepolis?
A lion attacking a bull
A lion attacking a bull recurs all over the site, almost like a coat of arms; it is often read as a sign from the heavens, with the lion standing for the sun.
Q 17A later Persian tradition says the conqueror who burned Persepolis also destroyed which treasure, written in gold ink on cow-skins?
The Zoroastrian scriptures
The Zoroastrian scriptures are said to have burned in a priestly book written centuries later; ironically, the palace fire may have saved thousands of clay tablets by burying them under a fallen wall.
Q 18Which city, itself later eclipsed by Shiraz, rose beside the ruins of Persepolis and reused their stone?
Estakhr
Estakhr, five kilometres away, went on to be the home city of the Sasanian dynasty, and it resisted the Arab conquest so fiercely that many of its people were killed.
Q 19Which deity do the royal inscriptions at Persepolis thank as 'the greatest of the gods'?
Ahura Mazda
Ahura Mazda is named in text after text, and the winged figure hovering over the king in the carvings was long taken for his image; many scholars now read it as a symbol of royal fortune.
Q 20The graphic novel Persepolis opens with its author's childhood during which upheaval?
The Islamic Revolution
The Islamic Revolution had toppled the Shah a year before the story opens in 1980, with its heroine aged ten, the child of politically active parents who had opposed him.
Gold and silver
Gold and silver plaques lay in stone boxes with a handful of coins beneath them, every coin foreign, probably because the empire had not yet begun striking its own.
Q 24The coins buried beneath the Apadana at Persepolis include a type first struck by which famously wealthy king?
Croesus
Croesus lost his kingdom of Lydia to the Persians, yet the conquerors kept striking his coin design: the buried pieces were fresh from a mint under Persian rule.
Q 25What do the Apadana staircase reliefs depict?
Peoples of the empire in traditional dress bringing gifts
Peoples of the empire in traditional dress bringing gifts fill the stairway in 23 delegations, and an usher takes the leader of each one by the hand to bring the group before the king.
Q 26Who carved his name into Persepolis's Gate of All Nations in 1870, a year before his famous meeting in Africa?
Henry Morton Stanley
Henry Morton Stanley cut 'New York Herald' beside his name, for the paper that had him touring the East; the following year he set off into Africa to find the missing David Livingstone.
Q 27By what other name is the Throne Hall known?
The Hundred-Columns Palace
The Hundred-Columns Palace had ten rows of ten columns in a hall nearly 70 metres square, and its doorways are carved with the king on a throne held aloft by figures of his subject peoples.
Q 28Persepolis's founder lies in a cliff tomb at which nearby site?
Naqsh-e Rostam
Naqsh-e Rostam has four royal tombs cut high into one cliff, yet only one carries an inscription naming its owner; the other three are matched to kings by informed guesswork.
Q 29Inscriptions copied at Persepolis first unlocked which ancient script?
Cuneiform
Cuneiform began to give way in 1802, when a young German teacher used the word for 'king', repeated in texts copied at the ruins, to work out the royal names around it.
Q 30What was staged at Persepolis in 1971?
The 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire
The 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire lodged its royal guests in a tent city beside the ruins, with a banquet catered by Maxim's of Paris, which shut its own doors for almost two weeks.