50 Hard Capitals Quiz

1. Which city served as West Germany’s capital from 1949 to 1990?

2. Which Finnish city was the capital when the Bank of Finland was founded there in 1811?

3. Which city was Lithuania’s provisional capital during the interwar period?

4. Which Serbian city was first proclaimed the capital in 1818?

5. The Spanish royal court left Madrid for which city between 1601 and 1606?

6. Which last royal capital of Myanmar was founded by King Mindon in 1857?

7. Japan established Heijō-kyō as its capital in 710 in what is now which city?

8. Which city was the capital of Portuguese America from 1549 to 1763?

9. Before Léopoldville, which Congo River port served as the colonial capital of the Belgian Congo?

10. Which island city formerly served as a capital for both Senegal and Mauritania?

11. What official name did Oslo use immediately before the change that took effect on 1 January 1925?

12. Harare was called what until its name changed in 1982?

13. Which former name appears on older maps where Maputo stands today?

14. What was Kinshasa called before its 1966 renaming?

15. Dushanbe carried which name from 1929 to 1961?

16. Which name was commonly used in Western writing for Ulaanbaatar before 1924?

17. Ashgabat briefly bore which name during the 1920s?

18. Between 1946 and 1992, Podgorica was known by what name?

19. What is Nuuk’s former official Danish name?

20. Lusaka replaced which town as Northern Rhodesia’s capital in 1935?

21. Which city did Shah Abbas I choose as his Safavid capital in 1598?

22. Bangui began as a French outpost in which year?

23. Which two branches of the Nile meet at Khartoum?

24. Belgrade’s Kalemegdan overlooks the meeting of which rivers?

25. Which Central Asian city became Timur’s imperial capital in the late fourteenth century?

26. What was Almaty called immediately before it was renamed Alma-Ata in 1921?

27. Yerevan’s river gorge is named for which river?

28. Bratislava’s municipal territory borders which two foreign countries?

29. Which river estuary lies beside Monrovia’s historic peninsula?

30. Baku’s bay opens onto which inland body of water?

31. Which Ethiopian ruler helped found Addis Ababa with his wife, Taytu Betul, in the late nineteenth century?

32. The urban project that created Saint Petersburg began in which year?

33. Who created Brasília’s Plano Piloto, the overall city plan?

34. Which Greek planner led the design of Islamabad’s original master plan?

35. Which architect worked with Herbert Baker on New Delhi’s planned imperial center?

36. Who drew the 1791 plan for Washington’s broad avenues and public spaces?

37. Which architect shaped Ljubljana’s riverside walks and the Triple Bridge?

38. In which year was Tirana selected as Albania’s provisional capital?

39. Which former royal capital preceded Phnom Penh as the seat of Cambodia’s court in the nineteenth century?

40. Rabat became Morocco’s administrative capital under the protectorate in which year?

41. Which European national capital sits highest above sea level?

42. Which engineer laid out Valletta’s sixteenth-century grid of streets?

43. Which mountain range provides Muscat’s rocky backdrop?

44. Whose 1767 plan established the grid for Edinburgh’s first New Town?

45. Maseru lies beside which river, also called the Mohokare?

46. Which university city served as Portugal’s capital in the Middle Ages before Lisbon?

47. Bucharest’s nickname Micul Paris translates as what?

48. Valletta takes its name from which grand master?

49. Before the move to Canberra in 1927, Australia’s Federal Parliament sat in which city?

50. At Phnom Penh, which river links the capital to the great lake of the same name?