At its peak in the 15th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe — stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Lithuania has one of the most remarkable stories in European history: the last pagan nation to be Christianised, a medieval superpower that stretched across half a continent, centuries of occupation, and a fierce modern independence movement that inspired the world. Today it is also obsessed with basketball in a way no other European nation can match. This quiz covers Vilnius's baroque Old Town, the Hill of Crosses, the Baltic Way, cepelinai dumplings, the Lithuanian language's ancient roots, and much more.
Each round presents 10 randomized questions from a pool of 50, with four multiple-choice options and instant feedback after every answer. Your final score comes with a performance tier and shareable results.
You'll explore Lithuania's geography as the southernmost and largest Baltic state, the UNESCO-listed baroque Old Town of Vilnius, Kaunas as the interwar capital, the Curonian Spit's extraordinary dune landscape, the medieval Grand Duchy that once spanned half a continent, Lithuania's late Christianisation in 1387, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian Empire's Latin alphabet ban, the path to independence in 1918 and again in 1990, the 1989 Baltic Way human chain, the January 1991 Events, the national passion for basketball including the legendary 1992 Barcelona Olympics, and the Lithuanian language's status as the oldest surviving Indo-European tongue.
Basketball became Lithuania's national sport during the Soviet era, when Lithuanian players dominated the USSR team and won Olympic gold in 1988 representing the Soviet Union. After independence, the Lithuanian national team had no funding for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics until the Grateful Dead rock band stepped in to sponsor their tie-dye jerseys — and Lithuania went on to win the bronze medal. Players like Arvydas Sabonis, one of the greatest centers in basketball history, Šarūnas Marčiulionis (the first Soviet-born player to play regularly in the NBA), and more recently Domantas Sabonis and Jonas Valančiūnas have cemented Lithuania's outsized basketball reputation. With a population of under 3 million, Lithuania has produced more NBA players per capita than almost any other country.
Lithuanian is widely considered the oldest surviving Indo-European language still spoken today. It has preserved archaic features — including grammatical cases, noun endings, and vocabulary — that other Indo-European languages lost thousands of years ago. The 19th-century linguist and scholar Karl Bopp noted that Lithuanian preserves forms closer to the original Proto-Indo-European parent language than Greek, Latin, or Sanskrit as living tongues. The 40-year ban on printing Lithuanian in the Latin alphabet by the Russian Empire (1864–1904), far from killing the language, actually galvanised Lithuanians around preserving it through underground book smugglers called knygnešiai.
Yes — Lithuania was the last country in Europe to officially convert to Christianity. Grand Duke Jogaila accepted baptism and converted Lithuania to Christianity in 1387 as part of the conditions for his marriage to Queen Jadwiga of Poland, which also created the personal union between Lithuania and Poland. Before this, Lithuania maintained its ancient Baltic pagan religion even while the Grand Duchy had expanded to become the largest state in Europe. Pagan practices, including the worship of the sacred oak and the tending of sacred fires, persisted in rural areas long after the official conversion.
Last updated: March 2026