Rio de Janeiro Trivia
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58 free Rio De Janeiro trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Rio de Janeiro was named for a river that does not exist, hosted a European royal court on the run from Napoleon, and lost the capital of Brazil to a city built from scratch in five years. This quiz covers that history alongside the postcard: Christ the Redeemer and the sculptor who made it, Sugarloaf and its 1912 cableway, the Maracanã and the 1950 defeat cariocas still talk about, Copacabana's wave-pattern promenade, Ipanema and the song that made it famous, the Sambadrome, the Selarón steps and the reforested Tijuca forest. There are also questions on the 2016 Olympics, Rock in Rio, funk and bossa nova, Machado de Assis, the Vaccine Revolt, favela origins, the conical cathedral and the New Year's Eve crowd dressed in white. Easy questions ask which city is bigger than Rio and what season Carnival precedes; hard ones want the height of Sugarloaf, the inventor who was meant to light the statue from Rome and the number of tiled steps in Lapa. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the city and its landmarks, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Try our Brazil and Buenos Aires quizzes next.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Rio de Janeiro is the second-largest city in Brazil after which city?
São Paulo
São Paulo only overtook Rio in the middle of the twentieth century; it now has over 11 million residents to Rio's roughly 6 million, though Rio's metro area holds about 13 million.
Q 02Which Italian navigator reputedly sailed with the fleet that named Rio in January 1502?
Amerigo Vespucci
Amerigo Vespucci is said to have been aboard as an observer when the fleet reached the bay on New Year's Day; the old tale that the sailors took it for a river's mouth is disputed.
Q 03Which European power planted a colony on an island in Guanabara Bay in 1555, before the Portuguese expelled it?
France
France sent the naval officer Villegagnon, who built Fort Coligny on an island in the bay; Protestants encouraged by Calvin joined him in 1557, but he quarrelled with them over doctrine, and the Portuguese took the fort in 1560.
Q 04Rio de Janeiro was founded on 1 March 1565 by a Portuguese force led by whom?
Estácio de Sá
Estácio de Sá, nephew of Governor General Mem de Sá, founded the city on 1 March 1565 as a base against foreign invaders and their Tamoio allies; he died of an arrow wound in 1567.
Q 05Rio de Janeiro's full founding name honours which saint, also the city's patron?
Sebastian
Saint Sebastian is the city's patron: the 1565 settlement was named São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro for the namesake saint of King Sebastião, and the Metropolitan Cathedral downtown carries the same dedication.
Q 06In 1808 the Portuguese royal court moved to Rio, fleeing whose invasion of Portugal?
Napoleon's
Napoleon's army under General Junot, backed by Spanish troops, reached the Portuguese capital in late 1807 just after the royal fleet had sailed; in Rio, residents were turned out of their homes to house the hundreds of nobles who arrived.
Q 07Which city took over from Rio as the capital of Brazil in 1960?
Brasília
Brasília was built in 41 months and inaugurated on 21 April 1960; Rio's old Federal District then became a state of its own, Guanabara, until it was merged into Rio de Janeiro state in 1975.
Q 08Which Brazilian president, elected in 1955, kept his promise to build a new inland capital?
Juscelino Kubitschek
Juscelino Kubitschek campaigned on the slogan '50 years in 5' and made the new capital its centrepiece; the city went up on the empty central plateau in 41 months, in time for him to open it before leaving office in 1961.
Q 09Which city across Guanabara Bay from Rio was capital of Rio de Janeiro state until 1975?
Niterói
Niterói ran the surrounding state because the city of Rio was governed separately, first as the national capital's federal district and then as Guanabara state; when the two merged in 1975, Rio took the title.
Q 10What are natives of the city of Rio de Janeiro called?
Cariocas
Cariocas is the name for people from the city, a Tupi-derived word; residents of the surrounding state are officially fluminenses instead, and the Carioca River long supplied most of the city's drinking water.
Q 11Which famous Rio beach lies directly west of Ipanema, across the Jardim de Alah canal?
Leblon
Leblon begins where Ipanema ends, at the canal that links the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon to the sea; in the 1880s a flower farm there hid runaway slaves, and its camellias became the emblem of the abolitionists.
Q 12The statue of Christ the Redeemer stands on the summit of which mountain?
Corcovado
Corcovado, a 700-metre peak inside Tijuca National Park, carries the statue; the cog railway to the top was opened by Emperor Pedro II in 1884, nearly half a century before there was a statue to visit.
Q 13Christ the Redeemer was voted one of the New Seven Wonders of the World in 2007 alongside which other South American site?
Machu Picchu
Q 21Passengers reaching Sugarloaf's summit change cable cars on which intermediate hill?
Morro da Urca
Morro da Urca, a 220-metre hill, is where the first car ends; when the line opened in October 1912 it went no further, and passengers waited until January 1913 for the second leg to the top.
Q 22To which country did Brazil lose the deciding 1950 World Cup match before a record Maracanã crowd?
Uruguay
Uruguay beat Brazil 2–1 on 16 July 1950 before a crowd of around 200,000; Brazil had needed only a draw, and the defeat is remembered as the Maracanaço.
Q 23The Maracanã is officially named after Mário Filho, who campaigned for it as what?
A sports journalist
Machu Picchu and the Rio statue were South America's two winners in the 2007 poll; Brazilians were urged to vote by phone and online, and some ten million were reported to have done so.
Q 14Christ the Redeemer's outer layer is made of which stone?
Soapstone
The core is reinforced concrete; the soapstone was chosen for durability and ease of use, and periodic repairs replace pieces damaged by wind and lightning.
Q 15Christ the Redeemer, completed in 1931, is the world's largest sculpture in which design style?
Art Deco
Art Deco was in fashion when the statue was built in the 1920s; its engineer chose reinforced concrete as strong enough to carry the outstretched arms of a figure 30 metres tall, on an 8-metre pedestal.
Q 16At Christ the Redeemer's 1931 opening, which inventor was meant to switch on the floodlights from another continent?
Guglielmo Marconi
Guglielmo Marconi was to trigger the floodlights by radio from Rome, 9,200 km away; accounts differ on whether it worked, and one says bad weather forced staff to switch the lights on at the site.
Q 17The original 1920s design for Rio's Christ the Redeemer would have shown Jesus holding what?
A globe and a cross
Early designs had Christ holding a globe and a cross, but the open-armed pose was chosen as a symbol of peace; Brazilian Catholics funded much of the work.
Q 18Which Rio museum, housed in a former imperial palace, was gutted by fire in September 2018?
The National Museum
The National Museum, once home to Brazil's royal and imperial family, burned on 2 September 2018, three months after marking its 200th anniversary; most of its 20 million items are believed to have been destroyed.
Q 19Which sprinter won the men's 100 and 200 metres at Rio 2016?
Usain Bolt
Usain Bolt had also won both races in 2008 and 2012, making it three sprint doubles in a row; he ran not at the Maracanã, which hosted the ceremonies, but across town at the Olympic Stadium.
Q 20Which footballer scored his 1,000th career goal at the Maracanã in November 1969?
Pelé
Pelé reached the mark, known in Brazil as 'O Milésimo', by converting a penalty for Santos against Vasco da Gama on 19 November 1969, in his 909th first-class match.
A sports journalist, Mário Filho pushed for the stadium in his columns, and his paper Mundo Sportivo staged Rio's first samba school parade contest in 1932; he was the brother of playwright Nelson Rodrigues.
Q 24The word 'Maracanã' comes from a Tupi term for what kind of animal?
A parrot
Maracanã is Tupi for a parrot, a name for small macaws and parakeets once common in the area; the Maracanã River, named for the birds, rises in the forested Tijuca hills and runs through the North Zone on its way to Guanabara Bay.
Q 25The 2014 World Cup final at the Maracanã saw Germany beat which team 1–0?
Argentina
Germany beat Argentina 1–0 after extra time, Mario Götze scoring in the 113th minute; the Maracanã hosted seven matches that tournament and the Olympic opening and closing ceremonies two years later.
Q 26Which US city went out first in the 2009 vote that gave Rio the 2016 Olympics?
Chicago
Chicago went out first with 18 votes, even though President Obama flew to Copenhagen to back the bid in person; Rio then beat Madrid 66 to 32 to become South America's first Olympic host.
Q 27Rio's first-ever Olympic bid, for the 1936 Games, lost out to which city?
Berlin
Berlin beat Barcelona in the 1931 vote after Rio and eleven other hopefuls had dropped out; Rio's bids for the 2004 and 2012 Games also fell short before the city finally won the right to host.
Q 28Which circuit hosted the Formula One Brazilian Grand Prix in 1978 and from 1981 to 1989?
Jacarepaguá
Jacarepaguá, renamed in 1988 for Rio-born champion Nelson Piquet, lost the race to Interlagos in 1990 and was demolished in 2012 to make way for venues for the 2016 Olympics.
Q 29Which sport is said to have been invented on Copacabana Beach in 1965?
Footvolley
Footvolley's origin story has a group of friends, barred from their seaside kickabouts, moving onto Copacabana's volleyball courts and playing over the net without using their hands.
Q 30What is a Scottish mill worker said to have had his wife bring to Rio for an 1894 match?
A ball
A ball, the story goes, came in Elizabeth Donohoe's luggage when she joined her husband Thomas, a dyer at the Bangu textile mill; his workmates' kickabout came months before Charles Miller's better-known 1895 match in another city.