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70 free Romania trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Romania trivia quiz covers the whole country. It opens with the basics — the capital, the Black Sea, the neighbours, the leu — then moves through the history: Burebista and Trajan's Dacia, the 1859 union of Moldavia and Wallachia, independence from the Ottomans, Greater Romania in 1918, King Michael's forced abdication, Ceaușescu's Securitate and the revolution that began in Timișoara in December 1989. Then come the things people actually argue about at pub quizzes: whether Bran Castle has anything to do with Dracula, where Vlad the Impaler was born, why the Palace of the Parliament is the heaviest building on Earth, how Nadia Comăneci's perfect 10 showed up on the scoreboard, Hagi's nickname, Steaua's 1986 European Cup, Brâncuși's Bird in Space, the Voroneț blue, the Merry Cemetery, țuică and mămăligă. About a third are easy warm-ups; the rest climb to real stumpers. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's Romania articles and the sources they cite, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Romania?
Bucharest
It stands on the River Dâmbovița and was nicknamed 'Paris of the East' for its architecture between the wars.
Q 02Romania lies on the northwestern shore of which sea?
Black Sea
The Danube empties into it through a delta shared with Ukraine.
Q 03Which of these countries does NOT border Romania?
Poland
Its neighbours are Ukraine, Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and Moldova, plus the Black Sea coast.
Q 04The name 'Romania' ultimately derives from a Latin word meaning what?
Roman
The ethnonym român was first written down by Italian humanists travelling the region in the sixteenth century.
Q 05The Romanian language belongs to which family, alongside Italian, French and Spanish?
Romance
It evolved from Vulgar Latin and is the official language of both Romania and Moldova, spoken by about 22 million people natively.
Q 06The modern Romanian state was formed in 1859 by uniting Wallachia with which other principality?
Moldavia
Alexandru Ioan Cuza ruled the united principalities; the country became a kingdom under Carol I in 1881.
Q 07Romania gained independence from which empire in 1877?
Ottoman
The independence was formalised by the Treaty of Berlin the following year.
Q 08Romania's Great Union Day on 1 December commemorates the 1918 union of which region with the kingdom?
Transylvania
Bukovina and Bessarabia joined the same year, creating Greater Romania at its largest ever extent.
Q 09Which Roman emperor conquered Dacia in 106 AD and turned much of it into a Roman province?
Trajan
The Dacian king Decebalus had resisted for decades; Rome pulled out again under Aurelian in the 270s.
Q 10Remains from Romania's Peștera cu Oase are Europe's oldest known what?
Homo sapiens
They have been radiocarbon dated to about 40,000 years ago.
Q 11Romania joined the European Union in which year?
2007
It had joined NATO three years earlier, on 29 March 2004.
Q 12What is the currency of Romania?
Leu
Its name means 'lion', a legacy of the Dutch lion thaler coins that once circulated in the region.
Q 13A Romanian leu is subdivided into 100 of what?
Bani
The word ban also simply means 'money' in Romanian.
Q 14What is Romania's highest peak?
Q 21Historian Radu Florescu places Vlad the Impaler's birth in which UNESCO-listed Transylvanian Saxon town?
Sighișoara
His father lived there in a three-storey stone house from 1431 to 1435; the town's citadel has been a World Heritage Site since 1999.
Q 22Which Neo-Renaissance palace at Sinaia was built for King Carol I between 1873 and 1914?
Peleș Castle
Carol I, under whom Romania won independence, fell in love with the mountain scenery on a visit in 1866.
Q 23Romania's Palace of the Parliament holds which world record?
Heaviest building
Ordered by Ceaușescu and built from 1984 to 1997, it weighs about 4.1 million tonnes and is the largest civilian administrative building anywhere.
Moldoveanu
It rises to 2,544 m in the Făgăraș range; the Carpathians have 14 ranges topping 2,000 m.
Q 15The Danube Delta is the second-largest river delta in Europe after which one?
The Volga
It is also the best preserved on the continent and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Q 16Romania is home to roughly what share of Europe's brown bears (excluding Russia)?
About half
It also holds around a fifth of the continent's wolves, thanks to vast undisturbed Carpathian forests.
Q 17The outline of Romania is often said to resemble which creature?
A goldfish
The Danube Delta forms the tail and the Banat the head, at least to those who squint.
Q 18Vlad the Impaler's famous 1462 Night Attack at Târgoviște was launched against which sultan?
Mehmed II
Vlad ruled Wallachia three separate times and had been held hostage at the Ottoman court as a boy.
Q 19Vlad the Impaler's name Dracula came from his father's membership of which chivalric order?
The Dragon
Vlad Dracul means 'Vlad the Dragon' in medieval Romanian; his son became Drăculea, 'son of the Dragon'.
Q 20Which castle near Brașov is marketed as 'Dracula's Castle', despite no link to Stoker?
Bran
It was built by Saxons in 1377 and now displays Queen Marie's art and furniture collection.
Q 24Who was the chief architect of the Palace of the Parliament, leading a team of about 700 architects?
Anca Petrescu
She was still in her twenties when she won the commission for what was then called the People's House.
Q 25Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were executed by firing squad on which date in 1989?
Christmas Day
A drumhead show trial convicted them of genocide and economic sabotage the same day, ending 42 years of Communist rule.
Q 26The Romanian revolution of December 1989 began in which western city?
Timișoara
It was the only 1989 revolution in the Warsaw Pact to violently overthrow a leadership and execute its leader.
Q 27What was the name of Ceaușescu's feared secret police?
Securitate
It ran mass surveillance and controlled the press in what was seen as one of the most repressive states in the Eastern Bloc.
Q 28Ceaușescu enjoyed a surge in popularity in 1968 for publicly condemning what?
The invasion of Czechoslovakia
The liberal moment was brief; his regime soon became one of the most rigid in the bloc.
Q 29The Transfăgărășan mountain road was built in the early 1970s for what original purpose?
A military route in case of invasion
It became world-famous after Top Gear drove it in 2009 and called it the best road in the world.
Q 30Nadia Comăneci became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10 at the Olympics at which Games?
Montreal 1976
She was 14; the scoreboard could not display a 10 and showed '1.00' instead.