Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Pyrenees trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Pyrenees trivia quiz covers the mountain range that walls off the Iberian Peninsula from the rest of Europe. The easy questions handle the basics: which countries it divides, the microstate tucked inside it, the highest peak, the Song of Roland and the big white dogs that guard its flocks. From there it moves through the geology, the cirques and gaves, the passes from Roncevaux to Envalira, the desman and the brown bears, and the languages spoken along the range. The harder half is for geography and history buffs: the Bay of Biscay's role in raising the mountains, Xatardia and the saxifrages, the talc pit at Trimoun, the Pic du Midi telescope that photographed the Moon for Apollo, the Odeillo solar furnace, Pheasant Island and the treaty that left Llívia stranded in France, and the Gascon meaning of Tourmalet. If you have played our mountains or France and Spain quizzes, this is the deep dive on one range. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries for the Pyrenees, the treaty, the Tourmalet, Roncevaux and the Pyrenean Mountain Dog before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Pyrenees form the border between which two countries?
France and Spain
France and Spain share the crest of the Pyrenees as their frontier, a border running from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean along most of the range's length.
Q 02Roughly how long are the Pyrenees, from their western junction to the Mediterranean?
500 km
The Pyrenees stretch roughly 500 km from their Atlantic end near the Basque coast to Cap de Creus, the Mediterranean headland where the range meets the sea.
Q 03What is the highest peak in the Pyrenees?
Aneto
Aneto, on the Maladeta massif in Huesca province, Spain, is the highest peak of the Pyrenees; its summit is reached across the narrow rock ridge nicknamed the Paso de Mahoma.
Q 04How high is Aneto, the range's highest summit?
3,404 m
The summit stands at 3,404 m above sea level, the highest point in the Pyrenees; Posets, at 3,375 m, is the range's second-highest peak.
Q 05Which microstate lies within the range?
Andorra
Its capital Andorra la Vella is the largest town inside the range.
Q 06In classical legend, the range is named for Pyrene, a princess violated by which hero?
Hercules
Hercules, drunk as a guest of King Bebryx, violated Pyrene; in Silius Italicus's Punica he later found her remains and made the mountains echo her name.
Q 07Other ancient writers derived the name Pyrenees from the Greek word for what?
Fire
Fire is pyr in Greek; Diodorus Siculus told of herdsmen whose blaze burned the whole range and gave it its name.
Q 08Which French département is also known as Northern Catalonia?
Pyrénées-Orientales
Pyrénées-Orientales, the easternmost of the six French Pyrenean départements, is centred on Perpignan and the historic Roussillon, the area Catalans call Northern Catalonia.
Q 09Physiographically, the Pyrenees are a province of which larger mountain division?
The Alpine System
The Alpine System, the belt of young fold mountains running across southern Europe toward the Himalayas, is the division in which the Pyrenees form a distinct physiographic province.
Q 10Compared with the Alps, the Pyrenees are what?
Older
Older than the Alps, the Pyrenees were built on Paleozoic and Mesozoic sediments, and their uplift peaked in the Eocene while the Alps kept rising through the Miocene.
Q 11The Pyrenees rose when which body of water 'fanned out', pushing Spain against France?
The Bay of Biscay
The Bay of Biscay opened in the Cretaceous as Iberia rotated away from France; the later convergence of the two plates crumpled the sediments between them into the Pyrenees.
Q 12What rock gives the eastern Pyrenees their massive, unworn character?
Granite
Granite and gneiss make up almost the whole of the eastern Pyrenees and resist erosion, whereas in the west the granite peaks are flanked by layers of limestone.
Q 13What is the local name for the mountain torrents that form the Pyrenees' waterfalls?
Gaves
Q 21Roughly where does the annual snow-line lie in the Pyrenees?
2,700 to 2,800 m
The permanent snow-line lies at about 2,700 to 2,800 m; below it, seasonal snow covers the ground at least half the time above 1,600 m from December to April.
Q 22Which small semi-aquatic mammal is native to the mountain streams of the Pyrenees?
The Pyrenean desman
The Pyrenean desman, a mole-like insectivore with a snorkel-like snout, hunts in fast mountain streams; its only living relative, the Russian desman, lives in the Volga and Don basins.
Q 23The Pyrenean ibex, an endemic subspecies, became extinct in which year?
2000
Gaves is the Gascon name for the mountain torrents of the French Pyrenees, such as the Gave de Pau and the Gave d'Oloron, which meet near Peyrehorade.
Q 14What is the highest waterfall in the Pyrenees?
Gavarnie
Gavarnie's Grande Cascade plunges more than 400 metres at the head of the Gave de Pau, inside the cirque of the same name, and is usually called the highest waterfall in France.
Q 15What is a 'cirque' in Pyrenean landscape terms?
A semicircle of precipitous cliffs at a valley head
A semicircle of precipitous cliffs at a valley head, carved by a former glacier, is a cirque; the Cirque de Troumouse, roughly four kilometres across, is among the largest.
Q 16What is the highest road pass in the Pyrenees, on the road up to the microstate?
Port d'Envalira
Port d'Envalira, at 2,408 m on the main road from France into the microstate, is the highest paved pass in the Pyrenees and among the highest points on Europe's road network.
Q 17Which crossing in Navarre, at 1,057 m, is an important point on the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route?
Roncevaux
At 1,057 m it is one of the lower crossings.
Q 18According to legend, which of Charlemagne's paladins cut the famous gap in the main ridge, La Brèche, with his sword?
Roland
La Brèche de Roland is said to have been struck by his sword Durendal.
Q 19The Trimouns open pit near Luzenac in Ariège is one of Europe's greatest sources of what?
Talc
Talc is dug at Trimouns, the world's largest talc quarry, perched at about 1,800 m above Luzenac and worked only in the snow-free months.
Q 20Why do the western Pyrenees receive far more precipitation than the eastern?
Moist Atlantic air from the Bay of Biscay
Moist Atlantic air from the Bay of Biscay arrives on the prevailing westerlies and drops most of its rain on the western slopes, leaving the eastern end markedly drier.
The last Pyrenean ibex, a female named Celia, was found dead in January 2000; a 2003 cloning attempt produced a kid that lived only minutes.
Q 24From which country were brown bears brought in the 1990s to revive the Pyrenean population?
Slovenia
Slovenia supplied the bears: females Ziva and Mellba were released near Melles in 1996 and the male Pyros followed in 1997, the founders of the revived population.
Q 25The genus most abundantly represented in the range's flora, with several endemic species, is which?
Saxifrages
Saxifrages are the most numerous genus in the Pyrenean flora, with several endemic species, among them the long-leaved Saxifraga longifolia of limestone cliffs.
Q 26Which Spanish national park in the Pyrenees dates from 1918, making it among Spain's oldest?
Ordesa y Monte Perdido
Ordesa y Monte Perdido, a national park since 1918, is centred on the 3,355 m limestone peak whose name means Lost Mountain; UNESCO listed the massif as World Heritage in 1997.
Q 27The 1997 UNESCO listing cited the landforms and testimony to which traditional agricultural system?
Transhumance
Transhumance, the seasonal movement of livestock, shaped the landscape: whole families once moved uphill with their herds in May or June and back down in autumn.
Q 28Which minority language, in its Aranese dialect, is spoken in the Aran Valley?
Occitan
Occitan, in its Gascon variety called Aranese, is the Aran Valley's native tongue and has been co-official in Catalonia alongside Catalan and Spanish since 2006.
Q 29The Pic du Midi Observatory sits at what altitude?
2,877 m
The Pic du Midi Observatory stands at 2,877 m on the Pic du Midi de Bigorre, reached by cable car from the ski resort of La Mongie; construction of the observatory began in 1878.
Q 30A NASA-funded telescope at Pic du Midi was installed in 1963 to photograph what?
The Moon, ahead of the Apollo missions
The Moon, ahead of the Apollo missions, was the target: a NASA-funded 106 cm telescope installed in 1963 produced detailed lunar surface photographs for landing-site studies.