Switzerland Trivia
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This Switzerland trivia quiz has 106 free questions with answers and covers the country from every side: its geography (the Alps, the Matterhorn, Lake Geneva, the Rhine Falls, the longest rail tunnel on Earth), its odd politics (26 cantons, four national languages, a seven-person executive, referendums on everything, women voting only from 1971), its history (the 1291 charter, William Tell, Napoleon, the 1848 constitution, armed neutrality since 1815) and its exports, from Toblerone and Emmental to Rolex, Swatch, Victorinox, Nestlé, Velcro, LSD and the Helvetica typeface. The easy questions are ones most travellers can answer (which city is the capital, what shape the flag is, which mountain is on the Toblerone box). The medium ones ask about the languages, the Red Cross, the Swiss Guard, Heidi and Roger Federer. The hard ones dig into Sonderbund, Bircher-Benner, Albert Hofmann's bicycle ride and the year Appenzell finally let women vote. Every answer has been checked against a reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 106 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many cantons make up the Swiss Confederation?
26
26 cantons make up Switzerland; the newest, Jura, was created in 1979 after French-speaking Catholic separatists campaigned for decades to leave a mostly German-speaking, Protestant canton.
Q 02Which city is Switzerland's de facto capital, known as the "federal city"?
Bern
Bern beat Zurich and Lucerne in a parliamentary vote on 28 November 1848, but the constitution names no capital, which is why it is officially only the 'federal city'.
Q 03How many national languages does Switzerland have?
Four
Switzerland has four national languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh, the last spoken by about 0.5% of the population, mainly in Graubünden.
Q 04Which Latin name for Switzerland gives the country its code CH and its internet domain .ch?
Confoederatio Helvetica
Confoederatio Helvetica was coined after the federal state was founded in 1848, a Latin label that favours none of the national languages; it has appeared on Swiss coins since 1879.
Q 05Europe's powers recognised Swiss neutrality after which ruler's defeat?
Napoleon
Napoleon's fall sent Switzerland's future to the Congress of Vienna, where the powers recognised its neutrality in 1815 because a neutral buffer between rival great powers suited them all.
Q 06Which organisation did Switzerland join only in 2002?
United Nations
The United Nations admitted Switzerland on 10 September 2002 after about 55% of voters backed joining; in 1986 three in four had voted no.
Q 07The 1847 Swiss civil war was fought against a breakaway alliance of Catholic cantons known as what?
The Sonderbund
The Sonderbund, a separate league of seven Catholic cantons formed in 1845, was beaten by the federal army in under a month in November 1847, clearing the way for the 1848 constitution.
Q 08Which fictional detective did his author try to kill off in 1893 with a plunge into Switzerland's Reichenbach Falls?
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes went over the falls with Moriarty because Conan Doyle wanted time for 'better things'; readers cancelled their Strand subscriptions in their thousands, and he later brought Holmes back.
Q 09Which canton was the last to give women the vote in cantonal affairs, in 1990?
Appenzell Innerrhoden
Appenzell Innerrhoden gave way only when local women sued and the Federal Supreme Court ruled against the canton in November 1990, 19 years after Swiss women won the federal vote in 1971.
Q 10Which seven-member body is Switzerland's collective head of state?
Federal Council
The Federal Council's seven members are elected by parliament and share power equally: the presidency passes to a different member each year and carries no special authority.
Q 11How many signatures must a Swiss popular initiative gather within 18 months to force a national vote?
100,000
100,000 valid signatures in 18 months force a vote on changing the constitution; the bar was 50,000 until 1977, and the first initiative to pass, in 1893, banned slaughter without stunning.
Q 12What is unusual about the shape of the Swiss national flag?
It is square
It is square because the national flag followed the square war flag adopted for the Swiss army; Swiss ships, by contrast, fly a rectangular version.
Q 13Dufourspitze, the highest peak in Switzerland, is a summit of which mountain?
Monte Rosa
Q 21The Rhine Falls, Europe's most powerful waterfall, lie between Zurich and which other canton?
Schaffhausen
Schaffhausen owes its existence to the falls: the Rhine could not be navigated past them, so boats unloaded there and the town grew up where goods were carried on overland.
Q 22Which Swiss city is home to the Bank for International Settlements?
Basel
Basel has housed the Bank for International Settlements since 1930; it was set up to collect and distribute Germany's First World War reparations, the 'settlements' of its name.
Q 23Which Swiss businessman founded the Red Cross and won the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901?
Henry Dunant
Monte Rosa's Dufourspitze reaches 4,634 m; marked simply 'Highest Peak' on old Swiss maps, it was renamed in 1863 to honour General Dufour, who led the first official mapping of the country.
Q 14Edward Whymper's party made the first ascent of which peak in 1865, losing four men on the descent?
The Matterhorn
The Matterhorn was a race: Whymper's seven reached the top while a rival Italian party was still climbing the far side. On the descent one man slipped and dragged three others down before the rope broke.
Q 15The name Toblerone blends its founder's surname with which Italian word?
Torrone (nougat)
Torrone (nougat) plus Tobler named the bar launched in 1908; in 2023 its Alpine-peak logo was dropped because some production moved to Slovakia, breaking Swiss rules on national symbols.
Q 16Which is the largest lake in Switzerland, fed and drained by the Rhône?
Lake Geneva
Lake Geneva, Lac Léman in French, lies about 60% in Switzerland and 40% in France; Mary Shelley began Frankenstein at a villa above its shore in the cold, stormy summer of 1816.
Q 17The Rhône rises at a glacier in the Swiss Alps and flows into which sea?
The Mediterranean
The Mediterranean receives the Rhône through the Camargue delta after a run of more than 800 km; the Rhine, born in the same Alps, flows the opposite way to the North Sea.
Q 18The Gotthard Base Tunnel took which world record from Japan's Seikan Tunnel in 2016?
Longest railway bore on Earth
The longest railway bore on Earth at 57 km, the Gotthard Base Tunnel gives trains a flat, low-level route through the Alps, so heavier and longer freight trains can cross without a climb.
Q 19At 3,454 metres, which is the highest railway station in Europe?
Jungfraujoch
Jungfraujoch was not the planned last stop: the line was meant to reach the Jungfrau's summit, but after 16 years of tunnelling through the Eiger and Mönch it ended at the saddle in 1912.
Q 20The Aletsch Glacier, the largest in the Alps, lies in which canton?
Valais
Valais holds all of the Great Aletsch Glacier even though it lies in the Bernese Alps: the ice flows down the range's southern side towards the Rhône valley, and has been retreating since the 19th century.
Henry Dunant witnessed the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino in 1859 while travelling to petition the French emperor; his memoir led to the Red Cross, and he shared the first Nobel Peace Prize in 1901.
Q 24Which force, founded in 1506, recruits only Swiss citizens?
The Vatican's papal guard
The Vatican's papal guard dates from 1506, when Pope Julius II took on a contingent of Swiss mercenaries; 147 of them died defending Clement VII during the Sack of Rome in 1527.
Q 25Swiss surrealist painter Giger shared an Oscar for his designs for which 1979 film?
Alien
Alien got its creature after director Ridley Scott saw Giger's picture Necronom IV and pressed a reluctant studio to hire the artist as its designer.
Q 26Under the Swiss militia system, what do soldiers famously keep at home?
Their army-issued weapons
Swiss militia soldiers keep their army-issued weapons at home between service periods, a practice voters upheld in a 2011 referendum; ammunition has not been issued for home storage since 2007.
Q 27What was Albert Einstein's day job in Switzerland when he published special relativity in 1905?
Patent office clerk
Patent office clerk was the job Einstein took because, despite his diploma, he could not find a teaching post; he wrote his 1905 papers in his spare time and left for a professorship only in 1909.
Q 28CERN, the particle physics laboratory, straddles the French border just outside which Swiss city?
Geneva
Geneva's suburb of Meyrin is home to CERN, where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989 so that scientists in different countries could share information.
Q 29Which of these was NOT invented in Switzerland?
Aspirin
Aspirin was a German product, launched by Bayer in 1899; absinthe (1790s), the Rex peeler (1947) and the scanning tunnelling microscope (IBM's Rüschlikon lab, 1981) all came from Switzerland.
Q 30Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann's first deliberate LSD trip on 19 April 1943 is now commemorated as what?
Bicycle Day
Bicycle Day marks the day Hofmann deliberately swallowed LSD at the Sandoz lab and, with wartime limits on car use, had his assistant escort him home by bicycle as the effects took hold.