Reichstag Building
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
40 free Reichstag Building trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Few buildings have lived through as much as the Reichstag in Berlin. It opened under an emperor who disliked it, burned in 1933 in a fire that helped a dictatorship take hold, was fought over room by room in 1945, and then stood half-ruined beside the Berlin Wall for decades. Today it is home to the German parliament again, with a glass dome that visitors can walk up while debates go on below. This quiz collects the fun facts behind that story. It covers the building's design and the words over its entrance, the night of the fire and the trial that followed, the famous wartime photograph taken on its roof, the Cold War concerts and escapes on its doorstep, the summer it disappeared under fabric, and the rebuild that added the dome, the artworks and a green energy system. It suits travellers planning a visit to Berlin, history students, quiz teams and anyone who has stood on the lawn outside and wondered what the building has seen. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which artist couple wrapped the whole Reichstag building in fabric for two weeks in 1995?
Christo and Jeanne-Claude
Christo and Jeanne-Claude lobbied for 24 years before parliament voted to allow it. They paid for the project themselves by selling drawings and early works.
Q 02Which English singer's 1987 show by the Reichstag drew East Germans to listen from behind the Wall?
David Bowie
David Bowie played close to the Wall on 6 June 1987, and the night ended with rioting among the listeners on the eastern side.
Q 03What was scratched out of the famous 1945 photograph of a Soviet flag raised over the Reichstag?
A second wristwatch
A second wristwatch on one soldier's arm hinted at looting. The photographer removed it with a needle before the picture was published.
Q 04Which Berlin landmark crowned by a four-horse chariot stands one block south of the Reichstag?
Brandenburg Gate
Brandenburg Gate lost its chariot to Napoleon, who carried the sculpture off to Paris in 1806. It came home after his defeat eight years later.
Q 05Which group did the Nazis blame for the Reichstag fire, jailing thousands of its members in days?
Communists
Communists were accused of plotting a coup, which let the new government suspend civil liberties by emergency decree the very next day.
Q 06Which city on the Rhine did Germany's parliament leave to move into the rebuilt Reichstag building?
Bonn
Bonn lost the 1991 vote on the seat of government by a slim margin, after a debate remembered as one of parliament's most memorable sessions.
Q 07What does 'Dem deutschen Volke', the inscription over the Reichstag's entrance, mean in English?
To the German People
To the German People was a dedication the Kaiser resisted for years because of its democratic ring. It went up only in the middle of the First World War.
Q 08Who was Germany's chancellor at the official reunification ceremony held at the Reichstag in October 1990?
Helmut Kohl
Helmut Kohl joined the crowds there amid huge firework displays, and the next day the united country's parliament met in the building as a symbolic act.
Q 09A memorial to which 'Iron Chancellor' stood before the Reichstag until the Nazis moved it in 1938?
Otto von Bismarck
Otto von Bismarck was shifted, statue and all, to clear space for Hitler's planned new capital. The move probably saved the monument from wartime destruction.
Q 10Which architect rebuilt the Reichstag building in the 1990s and gave it a walk-in glass dome?
Norman Foster
Norman Foster first proposed a huge canopy over the building and resisted a dome, giving way only when parliament insisted on one.
Q 11The Reichstag building stands on the bank of which river that winds through the centre of Berlin?
Spree
The Spree lay in the attackers' way in 1945: Red Army troops crossed a damaged bridge over the river, a mere 600 metres from the building.
Q 12War reparations paid by which defeated country in the 1870s funded the building of the Reichstag?
France
France paid for the new parliament without meaning to: the bill was settled from the indemnity it owed after losing the war of 1870–71.
Q 13What did the 1990s rebuild of the Reichstag keep inside as a trace of the 1945 battle for Berlin?
Soldiers' graffiti
Soldiers' graffiti in Cyrillic, scrawled by Red Army troops after the fighting, was kept on show. Insults were removed in agreement with diplomats.
Q 21Which Frankfurt architect won the commission to design the Reichstag building after a contest in 1882?
Paul Wallot
Paul Wallot was the second contest winner: an earlier design, chosen ten years before, was never built because the intended site was not available.
Q 22Which Dutch former bricklayer was convicted of starting the Reichstag fire and beheaded in 1934?
Marinus van der Lubbe
Marinus van der Lubbe went to the guillotine three days before his 25th birthday. Germany formally pardoned him in 2008.
Q 23After the 1933 fire, Germany's parliament met in which building facing the gutted Reichstag?
Kroll Opera House
Q 14Visitors climb the Reichstag dome on spiral ramps said to be reminiscent of which shape?
A double helix
A double helix is the usual comparison: one ramp winds up to the viewing platform while the other, set half a turn apart, leads back down.
Q 15What colour was the fabric that hid the Reichstag building from view for two weeks in 1995?
Silver
Silver fabric covering 100,000 square metres was tied down with blue rope, and millions of visitors came to see the building disappear.
Q 16The Reichstag stands on the eastern edge of which Berlin park, once a hunting ground for its rulers?
Tiergarten
Tiergarten means animal garden: the electors kept deer and other game fenced in there long before the land became a public park.
Q 17The Federal Convention gathers in the Reichstag building solely to elect which German office-holder?
The President
The President is chosen by every member of parliament plus an equal number of electors sent by the states, and the body has no other job.
Q 18How is the German word 'Reichstag' usually translated into English?
Imperial Diet
Imperial Diet is the literal sense, which is why the word now names only the building: the parliament inside is called the Bundestag.
Q 19Which head of state signed the emergency decree issued the day after the Reichstag fire?
Paul von Hindenburg
Paul von Hindenburg signed at his new chancellor's request, using emergency powers in the Weimar constitution to suspend civil liberties across Germany.
Q 20Germany's last Kaiser disliked the Reichstag and privately mocked it as a house for which animals?
Monkeys
Monkeys featured in his insult 'Reichsaffenhaus', and he also called the new parliament building the height of tastelessness.
Kroll Opera House had stood empty for nearly two years. There the deputies passed the Enabling Act, handing Hitler almost unlimited authority.
Q 24Which politician left his lunch in the Reichstag dining room to proclaim Germany a republic in 1918?
Philipp Scheidemann
Philipp Scheidemann acted without permission, and his party leader pounded the table and shouted that he had no right to proclaim the republic.
Q 25What hangs at the centre of the Reichstag dome to direct daylight down into the debating chamber?
A mirrored cone
A mirrored cone of 360 angled panes sends daylight to the chamber, while stale air rises through its hollow core and escapes from the open top.
Q 26What ironic nickname do Germans give the huge eagle in the Reichstag building's debating chamber?
Fat Hen
Fat Hen, or 'Fette Henne', pokes fun at its rounded shape. The eagle is an enlarged copy of one a sculptor designed for the old West German parliament.
Q 27Soviet commanders wanted the Reichstag taken in time for which annual holiday parade in Moscow?
May Day
May Day was close when Soviet troops reached the roof, yet fighting went on inside a building that had not housed parliament since it burned in 1933.
Q 28Before the Reichstag opened, parliament met for 23 years in the old home of a royal maker of what?
Porcelain
Porcelain from the royal manufactory gave way to politics when the premises were converted for the deputies in just 70 days, as a stopgap.
Q 29The bronze letters above the Reichstag's entrance were cast in 1916 from which melted-down objects?
Captured cannons
Captured cannons from the wars against Napoleon were melted for the 60-centimetre letters, which a Jewish family foundry cast.
Q 30Which emperor laid the Reichstag's foundation stone in 1884 but died before it was finished?
Wilhelm I
Wilhelm I died in 1888, the Year of Three Emperors, six years before the builders finished. His grandson inherited a parliament house he never liked.