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60 free Strait of Gibraltar trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Strait of Gibraltar is 14 kilometres wide, up to 900 metres deep, and has been the hinge between Europe and Africa since a flood refilled the Mediterranean five million years ago. This quiz covers the geography and the science first: the narrowest point, the Camarinal Sill, the two-way flow of Atlantic and Mediterranean water, the Messinian salinity crisis and the Zanclean flood, the internal waves visible from space, the resident orcas and the seabird migrations, and the Neanderthals who held out on the Rock. Then the people: the Pillars of Hercules and Ne plus ultra, Tariq ibn Ziyad's landing in 711 and the mountain named for him, the Anglo-Dutch capture of Gibraltar in 1704 and the Treaty of Utrecht, the Great Siege, Trafalgar, Churchill and the macaques, Ceuta and Tarifa, the U-boats that drifted through in silence, the Atlantropa dam scheme, the swimmer who crossed first, and the Spain-Morocco tunnel talked about since 1979. Easy questions ask which continents it separates; the expert tier asks for depths, dates and Latin names. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Strait of Gibraltar, Gibraltar, the Rock, the Pillars of Hercules, Ceuta, Tarifa and related pages, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. If you like this, try our quizzes on Gibraltar, Morocco and the Mediterranean.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Strait of Gibraltar connects the Mediterranean Sea to which ocean?
The Atlantic
It also separates Europe from Africa.
Q 02How wide is the Strait of Gibraltar at its narrowest point?
About 14 km
That is 7.7 nautical miles; ferries make the crossing in as little as 35 minutes.
Q 03In the 2020s, what was the fastest ferry crossing time between the two continents?
About 35 minutes
Ferries ran daily between Spain and Morocco, and Gibraltar to Tangier.
Q 04What is the range of the Strait's depth?
300 to 900 metres
The shallowest point, the Camarinal Sill, sits at about 280 metres.
Q 05The name Gibraltar comes from an Arabic phrase meaning what?
Tariq's Mount
It honours the Umayyad commander who crossed in 711.
Q 06What does the naval abbreviation STROG stand for?
Strait of Gibraltar
The archaic English name was the Gut of Gibraltar.
Q 07The Arabic name Bab al-Maghrib for the strait means what?
Gate of the West
Medieval Arabs also called it Az-Zuqaq, the Passage; the Romans called it Fretum Gaditanum.
Q 08The Romans called the strait Fretum Gaditanum, after which city?
Cadiz
Gades was the Roman name for Cadiz, home of the temple of Melqart.
Q 09The promontories flanking the strait were known in antiquity as what?
The Pillars of Hercules
Plato placed Atlantis beyond them, and Renaissance tradition says they bore the warning Ne plus ultra.
Q 10What was the Roman name for the Rock of Gibraltar, the northern Pillar of Hercules?
Mons Calpe
The southern pillar, Mons Abila, is disputed between Monte Hacho in Ceuta and Jebel Musa in Morocco.
Q 11Which two African peaks are the leading candidates for the southern Pillar of Hercules?
Monte Hacho and Jebel Musa
No single African peak is predominant, so the identity has been argued over for centuries.
Q 12Which of the labours of Hercules took him to the western limit of the world at the strait?
Fetching the cattle of Geryon
It was the tenth labour; Pindar called the pillars the "gates of Gades".
Q 13According to one Roman legend, how did Hercules create the strait?
He smashed through the mountain of Atlas
Q 21During the refilling of the Mediterranean 5.33 million years ago, sea level in the basin may have risen at what rate?
More than 10 metres per day
The peak discharge was about 100 million cubic metres per second, a thousand times the Amazon.
Q 22If the strait closed today, how long would it take most of the Mediterranean to evaporate?
About a thousand years
The evaporation rate exceeds all the rivers and rain that feed the sea.
Q 23Why does the strait's net water flow run eastwards, into the Mediterranean?
Evaporation there exceeds river inflow plus rainfall
Diodorus Siculus said instead that he narrowed an existing strait to keep out Atlantic monsters.
Q 14What Latin warning was said to be inscribed on the pillars flanking the strait?
Ne plus ultra
It means "nothing further beyond", a warning to sailors to go no further.
Q 15How tall is the Rock of Gibraltar?
426 metres
It is a monolithic limestone mountain at the tip of a 9-km promontory.
Q 16The Rock of Gibraltar is made mainly of what type of rock?
Limestone
Its Jurassic strata are overturned, with the oldest layers lying on top of the youngest.
Q 17What is unusual about the Barbary macaques on the Rock of Gibraltar?
They are the only wild monkeys in Europe
About 300 animals in five troops occupy the Upper Rock nature reserve.
Q 18In 1942 Winston Churchill ordered the Rock's monkey population restocked because of what belief?
Britain would lose the territory if they disappeared
The population had dwindled to just seven monkeys.
Q 19Around 5.97 million years ago the strait closed, causing the Mediterranean to dry and lay down vast salt deposits. What is this event called?
The Messinian salinity crisis
By geological standards it was quick, lasting around 640,000 years.
Q 20The ocean refilled the Mediterranean through the strait about 5.33 million years ago in what event?
The Zanclean flood
Ninety percent of the refilling may have taken between a few months and two years.
Saltier, denser Mediterranean water flows out underneath along the bottom.
Q 24What is the name of the strait's shallowest point, at its western end, where the two water masses are forced to mix?
Camarinal Sill
Internal waves generated there can be traced for as much as 100 km and seen in satellite imagery.
Q 25How did German U-boats slip into the Mediterranean through the British-controlled strait in the Second World War?
They drifted on the currents with engines off
Of 62 U-boats sent in, nine were sunk in the strait and ten more turned back damaged.
Q 26How many U-boats did Germany manage to send into the Mediterranean between September 1941 and May 1944?
62
All had to run the gauntlet of the strait.
Q 27Roughly how many orcas make up the resident pod around the strait?
About 36
It is one of the few pods left in Western European waters and is threatened by PCB pollution.
Q 28BirdLife International designated the strait an Important Bird Area because of what?
Hundreds of thousands of migrating seabirds
Shearwaters, Audouin's gulls, razorbills and puffins pass through each year.
Q 29The Rock of Gibraltar may have been one of the last refuges of which extinct humans, with evidence as recent as 24,000 years ago?
Neanderthals
Gorham's Cave has traces of their presence going back around 50,000 years.
Q 30Which Umayyad commander crossed the strait in 711 to begin the Muslim conquest of Iberia?
Tariq ibn Ziyad
He was governor of Tangier and, most sources say, a Berber.