Prague Trivia
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49 free Prague trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Prague was the imperial capital of Charles IV, the alchemical court of Rudolf II, the place where the Thirty Years' War and the Hussite Wars were both started by throwing officials out of windows, and the capital of Czechoslovakia through Nazi occupation, Soviet tanks and the Velvet Revolution. This quiz walks through all of that, from the legend of Libuse and the founding of Prague Castle to Jan Hus, Tycho Brahe, White Mountain, Operation Anthropoid, Jan Palach and Vaclav Havel. It then covers the city as visitors see it: the numerological start time of Charles Bridge, the clock with a skeleton that has been striking the hour since 1410, the largest ancient castle in the world according to Guinness, the cathedral that took nearly 600 years, the twelve-layer Jewish cemetery and the golem in the synagogue attic, the small Eiffel Tower on Petrin, the Dancing House, the Lennon Wall, the metro built in 1974, and why 'Good King Wenceslas' looks down on Wenceslas Square. Beer, Mozart's Don Giovanni and Kafka get their questions too. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on Prague and its landmarks, people and events, and each question shows the sentence that supports it. Our Czech Republic quiz covers the rest of the country.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Prague sits on which river?
The Vltava
The Vltava meets the Elbe at Melnik, where it is the longer river and carries more water, so by the usual rule the Elbe would count as its tributary.
Q 02Prague is nicknamed the City of a Hundred what?
Spires
Spires: mathematician Bernard Bolzano counted 103 of them in the 19th century, but with today's tally put at around 500 the nickname now undersells the skyline.
Q 03Which legendary prophetess foresaw Prague as 'a great city whose glory will touch the stars'?
Libuse
Libuse, in the legend, answered tribesmen who resented a woman's rule by taking a ploughman named Premysl as her husband, and their line became the Premyslid dynasty.
Q 04What wrecked Prague's Judith Bridge in 1342, so that Charles Bridge had to be built in its place?
A flood
A flood wrecked the Judith Bridge, yet a stone head from it, the Bearded Man, survives in the embankment wall, where Praguers long used it to gauge the river's height.
Q 05Charles IV, the emperor who founded Prague's New Town in 1348, came from which dynasty, new to Bohemia's throne?
Luxembourg
Luxembourg: his father John won Bohemia's throne in 1310 by marrying Elizabeth, sister of the last Premyslid king, whose murder in 1306 had ended the old dynasty's male line.
Q 06Charles University, founded in 1348, holds what distinction?
Oldest in Central Europe
Oldest in Central Europe: Charles IV modelled it on the University of Paris, and a 1409 decree handing control to its Czech masters drove foreign scholars away to found Leipzig University.
Q 07Charles Bridge's first stone was reputedly laid at a minute chosen because the date and time digits formed what?
A palindrome
A palindrome: legend puts the moment at 5:31 on 9 July 1357, written 1-3-5-7-9-7-5-3-1, a 'numerical bridge' the emperor hoped would lend strength to the stone one.
Q 08Charles Bridge's 30 statues are mostly in which style?
Baroque
Baroque: the statues were added around 1700, more than three centuries after the Gothic bridge was begun, and many have since been swapped for copies, with the originals kept indoors.
Q 09Prague's Hunger Wall was reputedly built in the 1360s for what purpose?
To give famine victims paid work
To give famine victims paid work is the legend's version; the wall was built in 1360–62 as a defence against attack from the west and south, and the hungry name stuck after a famine in 1361.
Q 10Which Prague preacher and university rector was burned at the stake in Konstanz in 1415?
Jan Hus
Jan Hus went to the council under a royal promise of safe conduct, was imprisoned within weeks and burned as a heretic; his death set off the Hussite Wars.
Q 11The 1618 Defenestration of Prague triggered which conflict?
The Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War grew out of the Bohemian revolt this act began, even though the two royal governors and their secretary who were its victims all survived.
Q 12'Defenestration', a word Prague made famous, means throwing someone out of what?
A window
A window: the word joins Latin de, 'out of', and fenestra, 'window', and is thought to have entered English after Bohemian rebels hurled two royal governors out of one in 1618.
Q 13Which Habsburg emperor moved his court to Prague in 1583 and filled it with alchemists?
Rudolf II
Q 21Which empress expelled the Jews from Prague in 1745, only to rescind the order three years later?
Maria Theresa
Maria Theresa accused Prague's Jews of disloyalty during the wartime occupation of the city, then gave way in 1748 to economic need and pressure from abroad, including Britain.
Q 22Which two Mozart operas premiered at Prague's Estates Theatre?
Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito
Don Giovanni and La clemenza di Tito both had their first nights here; Mozart finished Don Giovanni only the day before its 1787 premiere, then conducted it himself.
Q 23Wenceslas Square was known until 1848 as what?
The Horse Market
Rudolf II spent lavishly on alchemists, astronomers and art while neglecting to govern, until his brother Matthias forced him to hand over the Bohemian crown in 1611.
Q 14Which 1620 clash just outside Prague crushed the Bohemian revolt and Frederick V, the 'Winter King'?
White Mountain
White Mountain's losers paid dearly: in June 1621, 27 leaders of the revolt were executed in Old Town Square, where 27 crosses set in the paving still mark the spot.
Q 15According to Guinness, Prague's Hradcany complex is the world's largest what?
Ancient castle
Ancient castle: the complex covers almost 70,000 square metres, and its crown jewels lie behind a door with seven locks, so seven office-holders must gather to open it.
Q 16Which Prague church took nearly 600 years to finish?
St Vitus Cathedral
St Vitus Cathedral stood unfinished for centuries after war halted the work in the 15th century, and was only completed in 1929, in time for the St Wenceslas millennium.
Q 17Legend says Prague's clockmaker Hanus was what, so he could never build another clock?
Blinded
Blinded, the legend says, on the councillors' orders, and he stopped the clock in revenge; in fact it was built in 1410 by Mikulas of Kadan, decades before Hanus worked on it.
Q 18Which figure on Prague's astronomical clock strikes the hour and starts the Walk of the Apostles?
A skeleton representing Death
A skeleton representing Death rings the bell on the hour, and the figures beside him, among them a Turk, Vanity and a Miser, shake their heads to show they are not ready to go.
Q 19Prague's most famous golem was said to be made from river clay by which rabbi?
Judah Loew ben Bezalel
Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal, is said to have shaped the golem to protect the ghetto from attack; legend has its remains still lying in the attic of the Old New Synagogue.
Q 20Graves lie stacked in layers for lack of space in which Prague cemetery?
Old Jewish
The Old Jewish Cemetery could rarely buy more land, and Jewish custom forbids disturbing graves, so fresh earth was heaped over old burials, leaving today's crowded forest of headstones.
The Horse Market, laid out when Charles IV founded the New Town in 1348, was renamed for the Czech patron saint during the 1848 revolution on the proposal of writer Karel Havlicek Borovsky.
Q 24The 'Good King Wenceslas' of the carol was a 10th-century Duke of Bohemia murdered by whom?
His brother Boleslaus
His brother Boleslaus had him cut down on his way to church, then repented within a few years and had the remains moved to Prague, where Wenceslas became the Czech patron saint.
Q 25Who took up residence in Prague Castle as first president of the new state created after World War I?
Tomas Masaryk
Tomas Masaryk, a philosophy professor, spent the war in exile winning Allied backing for independence, and the new assembly elected him president while he was still in America.
Q 26Which senior Nazi was assassinated in Prague in 1942 during Operation Anthropoid?
Reinhard Heydrich
Reinhard Heydrich died eight days after Jozef Gabcik and Jan Kubis ambushed his open-topped car; in revenge the Nazis razed the village of Lidice and murdered or deported its people.
Q 27Prague's Letna metronome stands where a giant monument to whom was blown up in 1962?
Stalin
Stalin's granite likeness was unveiled in 1955, two years after his death and shortly after its own sculptor had killed himself; once Khrushchev denounced Stalin it became a liability and was blown up.
Q 28Who led the reforms of the 1968 Prague Spring as First Secretary of the Communist Party?
Alexander Dubcek
Alexander Dubcek promised 'socialism with a human face'; after the invasion he was forced out, expelled from the party and given a job as a forestry official.
Q 29Which two Warsaw Pact members refused to join the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia?
Romania and Albania
Romania and Albania refused: Romania's leader publicly condemned the invasion, and Albania left the Warsaw Pact altogether the following month.
Q 30Crowds at Prague's 1989 Velvet Revolution rallies jingled what, making the sound a symbol of the protests?
Their keys
Their keys: the jingling became the emblem of those weeks, which began when riot police broke up a student march on 17 November and ended with the Communist leadership resigning.