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Cities in European History #1

Can you guess these European cities, towns, and villages based on a historical anecdote?
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Quizmaster
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Last updated: February 10, 2026
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First submittedJanuary 23, 2014
Times taken133,767
Average score70.0%
Rating4.63
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Hint
City
Known as the "Birthplace of Democracy"
Athens
Defeated the above in the Peloponnesian War
Sparta
Capital of a powerful republic that became an empire after Julius Caesar
Rome
Italian city built on a lagoon which dominated Mediterranean trade in the Middle Ages
Venice
Rival of the above where Christopher Columbus was born
Genoa
City that the Nazis failed to capture in 1942–43, marking a turning point in WWII
Stalingrad
Known as the "Birthplace of the Renaissance"
Florence
City home to Johann Strauss II, a composer known as the "Waltz King"
Vienna
French city where popes and anti-popes resided during the Catholic schism
Avignon
Capital of the Byzantine Empire
Constantinople
Village in Belgium near where Napoleon met his final defeat
Waterloo
Capital of the last Muslim emirate in Spain which fell in 1492
Granada
Defenestrations in this city led to the Thirty Years War
Prague
Where English archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered by Henry II
Canterbury
Former Russian capital on the Neva River
St. Petersburg
Site of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
Sarajevo
The world's most industrialized city in the first half of the 1800s
Manchester
Where the Titanic was built
Belfast
Home to the tallest statue in the ancient world, which only stood for 54 years
before collapsing during an earthquake in 226 BC
Rhodes
From 1920–1939 this Baltic port was a "free city" under the protection
of the League of Nations
Gdańsk
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57 Comments
RDH131
+21
Level 39
Mar 3, 2014
It's Granada. Grenada is a Caribbean island.
Quizmaster
+4
Level ∞
Mar 3, 2014
Fixed
bezz
+2
Level 71
May 1, 2017
Also a name of a crappy Ford.
plattitude
+10
Level 94
Mar 3, 2014
Not sure if I should be surprised Byzantium isn't accepted. I mean, They Might Be Giants didn't even mention it...
Mogysht
+1
Level 49
Mar 26, 2015
Accepted for what? :)
morequizzes4u
+7
Level 32
Sep 12, 2016
Byzantium was the original name of the city before emperor Constantine changed it.
FolgoreCZ
+5
Level 59
Jan 20, 2019
Why should it be? It was never a capital when it was called Byzantium, it was renamed six years before the relocation and 71 years before Byzantine empire was even a thing.
kalbahamut
+9
Level 79
Feb 23, 2019
The Byzantine Empire was just the eastern half of the Roman Empire.
DerMan4
+1
Level 33
Mar 3, 2014
Canterburry please?
GuyNor09
+10
Level 42
Mar 14, 2014
But it's spelt Canterbury...
fitheach
+5
Level 58
Apr 22, 2020
It's never spelt that way. And if at first you don't succeed, this website allows you to try different spellings.
Westlund
+13
Level 83
Mar 4, 2014
Kudos for including defenestration.
Baalhammon
+8
Level 71
Mar 10, 2016
You should accept 'Firenze' for Florence because that's what it's called in most languages
Quizmaster
+4
Level ∞
Aug 1, 2016
Okay
Malbaby
+17
Level 70
Jan 8, 2017
Should also accept 佛罗伦萨 as there are more Chinese than anyone else.
HarryTaylor
+2
Level 45
Dec 24, 2020
yes as achinese that would help lol
fitheach
+9
Level 58
Apr 22, 2020
*Most* languages...? Wow, that's some claim!
GiuliaBernardi
+2
Level 34
Nov 15, 2021
It's Firenze in Italian, so I think it is good that it is accepted.
dunkinggandalf2
+3
Level 72
Jan 22, 2021
I think the point was that it's called Firenze by its inhabitants, which is pretty relevant.
bogomir
+1
Level 46
Jan 20, 2017
The quiz is nice but no London, Paris or Berlin. I'm wondering, was it a deliberate choice?
Antofagasta
+11
Level 70
Jan 20, 2017
Probably, you don't want all the obvious choices.
fitheach
+4
Level 58
Dec 8, 2022
The quiz is not a definitive list. London, Paris and Berlin are rather predictable, I prefer a quiz that actually makes you think...
Ryanlee
+5
Level 77
Jun 28, 2017
Waterloo isn't technically a city... while Carthage is located in North Africa (but more acceptable than Waterloo)
StiDark
+1
Level 67
Jun 6, 2019
I think Byzantium should be accepted
MiracleMax
+2
Level 73
Sep 8, 2019
I was so sure Utrecht would make it that I typed it before reading any clues. Bummer.
fitheach
+5
Level 58
Apr 22, 2020
I was so sure that Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch would make it that I typed it before reading any clues. Bummer.
jdt02
+1
Level 64
Apr 15, 2020
Waterloo isnt a city is it?
Xen0n
+2
Level 31
Apr 15, 2020
arghh just missed prague. not a clue what defenestrations meant
Pharley
+1
Level 75
Apr 15, 2020
Clue; fenetre is French for window.
RJF
+2
Level 67
Dec 7, 2022
Defenestration is the act of throwing something (or somebody) out of a window. The term probably wouldn't have entered into common-esque English vocabulary if it wasn't for the fact that there were two historically significant defenestrations in Prague.
QuadaleDingleton
+1
Level 60
Apr 15, 2020
Sarajevo is not much of a Slavic city
Teegthebeeg
+2
Level 53
Apr 15, 2020
It speaks very highly of you.
Majax
+3
Level 53
Apr 16, 2020
Sarajevo is located in Bosnia and Herzegovina, between Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, all those countries are slavics, they even were part of the Yugoslav Republic which was supposed to be an union of slavic countries
Majax
+1
Level 53
Apr 16, 2020
I think Berlin is also really important with Cold War
Geographiker
+2
Level 46
Aug 6, 2020
Please accept "Genua" for "Genoa", its the italian writing.
rustwat
+10
Level 62
Feb 21, 2021
It's Genova in Italian.
JonOfKent
+2
Level 61
Feb 11, 2026
Genau
JackintheBox
+1
Level 82
Apr 6, 2026
Genua is German.
evileve
+3
Level 38
Jun 2, 2021
I'd have thought that Birmingham would have an equal claim to be the most industrialised city in the world at that point.
fitheach
+3
Level 58
Dec 8, 2022
And Merthyr Tydfil (yes, really - although that may have been a little earlier)
TakerOfQuizzes
+1
Level 60
Mar 25, 2022
0:01 left!!!
RJF
+2
Level 67
Dec 7, 2022
Shouldn't the answer to the Peloponnesian War question be more than one city? Sure, Sparta did most of the legwork in that war, but there was a whole league of cities who fought on the same side and thus also defeated Athens, with Corinth, Thebes and Elis the most notable ones.
SoaringWombat
+1
Level 50
Dec 10, 2022
Read "Defenestrations" as "Deforestations" which left me baffled, don't know what the original word means so wouldn't have got it anyway
Twna
+2
Level 50
Dec 11, 2022
Easy for a historian 20/20 make it harder dude
Elomiau
+2
Level 65
Dec 11, 2022
The Germans (not nazis) did capture 90% of Stalingrad (the rest was behind the Volga River). It should be corrected
rosemaryne9
+1
Level 32
Jan 31, 2025
please accept "Petersburg" and "Karthage" or "Karthago"
Dollyfroggy
+4
Level 63
Mar 10, 2025
In my opinion, this quiz might be better with yellow box. I accidentally got a few when guessing another question.
Snoflakes
+1
Level 73
Feb 5, 2026
This one needs a follow-up with places like Amsterdam, London, Paris, Bologna, Cordoba, Palermo, Krakow, Kyiv, maybe Ypres, Trier, Nuremberg...
Stoggler
+1
Level 56
Apr 6, 2026
There's nothing stopping you doing a quiz
Arp2600
+1
Level 89
Feb 11, 2026
A little remark about empires, and the Roman Empire in particular. Rome was an empire before Caesar. It became an empire when it became expansionist, say around 150BCE, after the punic wars, and the first conquests in Greece. The concept of emperor is very complicated, and Rome didn't have one in the modern meaning before at least the end of the third century. For the Romans, an "imperator" was a military commander, who had absolute power over the region he was conquering. That power was temporary, and while a victorious "imperator" was celebrated in Rome with a triumph, he could not come into the city with his armies, or even his armor, he had to be a simple citizen in Rome. Anyway, several important Romans, like Scipio Africanus, Marius, Sylla, Pompeus and Caesar himself actually were imperators at some point. On the other hand, Augustus was not officially a monarch, he faked to have restored the republic, a semblance which remained until Diocletian, around 290.
Arp2600
+1
Level 89
Feb 11, 2026
So, what I meant to say in the first place was that an empire is not a country led by an emperor, but an expansionist country. The UK was an empire while being ruled by a king, not an emperor (though the title emperor of India was indeed used). It's even more true for France, which had en emperor until 1970 but still had a powerful empire afterwards... most of their conquests actually came in the end of the 19th century and it lasted until the 1960s.

The same holds for Rome, where the word imperium appeared to describe the vast and growing territory that the city was controlling, long before there were monarchs.

Why do we remember the Roman leaders as emperors then? Only because it was their first title. Usually, they were called "Imperator [...] Caesar Augustus" with the significant name in the brackets. It was to show that they had military power but it was not their main function. In fact, they should be called "princeps" (i.e. prince), their title of leader of the senate.

Quizmaster
+1
Level ∞
Feb 11, 2026
Yes. Although the transition from the principate to the dominate was not something that suddenly happened with Diocletian.

It's true that Augustus preserved the form of the republic.

But after a few decades had passed everyone knew that the republic was gone except in name only and that power was concentrated in the person of the emperor.

This quiz presents a simplified version suitable for a trivia website.

Arp2600
+1
Level 89
Feb 11, 2026
Hard to tell if "everyone" really knew that, but of course, it was mostly hypocrisy, because the Romans were allergic to the notion of king, or anything that resembles it. Every emperor in the 1st and 2nd centuries who tried to have a more obvious monarchic power was killed (or committed suicide) and was afterwards considered as mad (Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodius to name them). So yeah, there was a boss, but he had to respect the form.

Of course, the transition principate/dominate is arbitrary, it's the whole third century crisis that changed the system and the mentality.

(Oh, and for France, I meant 1870 of course, it's a republic since then)

dtlh25
+1
Level 46
Feb 16, 2026
Henry II was appalled when he heard of the murder of Beckett. A capital charge would not have stuck in the 12th century - nor would it today.
dumBunny
+1
Level 61
Apr 6, 2026
Good Quiz: some tough ones there that really had me thinking.
Cities in European History
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