What is the Bergen outdoor escape game?
The Bergen outdoor escape game is an escape room taken out into the city centre: you play on your smartphone, and at each of the 10 stops a puzzle asks you to read the scene in front of you and reason your way to the answer. Set aside about an hour and a half, including 40 minutes of walking over 2.7 km, and pick a day that suits you.
Each puzzle sits at a landmark and stands on its own, so there is no storyline to follow. Stuck? Help is dosed out in three stages, never more, whenever a riddle refuses to give way. Bergen suits this format because the stops lie close together around the harbour. You pass from the timber merchant houses of Bryggen to the 13th-century hall of Håkonshallen, and the cathedral wall still holds a cannonball from the 1665 Battle of Vågen.
- Durationabout 1.5 hours
- Walkingabout 40 min · 2.7 km
- Stops10
- LanguagesEnglish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch
What you do on the escape game
Solve
Work out the puzzle at each stop by reading the scene in front of you. No prior knowledge of Bergen is needed.
Look around
The clues sit in the surroundings of each landmark, so keep your eyes on the buildings, the squares and the water.
Walk
Google Maps guides you from stop to stop: about 40 minutes on foot over roughly 2.7 km.
Pace yourself
No clock runs in the background. Ask for a hint when you need one, stop for lunch and carry on later or another day.
See the route and attractions →
How it works
- Book online Choose the number of players. Your booking reference arrives by email straight away.
- Get the app Download the World City Trail app from the App Store or Google Play and enter your booking reference.
- Play when you like Start whenever you are ready, walk at your own pace and pause any time. No guide, no fixed schedule.
Who it suits
Friends on a city break
The puzzles give everyone something to argue about at the next stop, and nobody has to know Bergen beforehand.
Couples
A shared challenge that keeps you talking as you walk from one landmark to the next, with no timer ticking.
Team building
Teams of up to 5 play on their own phones, which keeps things simple for colleagues on a day out.
Good to know
- Bring a charged smartphone with mobile data; a power bank helps.
- Best started in daylight, so you can see the details the puzzles ask about.
- No entry tickets needed: everything happens outside the buildings. Going inside is optional and paid separately.
- Family friendly; children must be accompanied by an adult.
- Not suitable for wheelchair users and difficult with strollers.
- Teams of up to 5 work best; bigger groups split into several teams, one ticket per player.
- Every purchase helps support stray cats and dogs in Greece.
Puzzle route: from Den Nationale Scene to Bergenhus Fortress
10 stops · about 40 min walking · start: Den Nationale Scene · finish: Bergenhus Fortress
The first puzzle is at Den Nationale Scene, the theatre, and the last at Bergenhus Fortress. In between come the Sailors' Monument, Bergen Cathedral, Torget, the Shetlands-Larsen statue, Bryggen, Bryggens Museum, St Mary's Church and the Rosenkrantz Tower. Starting in daylight makes sense, because everything is solved outdoors and rain or wind slow the game down. Google Maps handles the walking, the app lets you change the order, and no entry tickets are needed for the puzzles.
Open the route map ↗
1Den Nationale SceneStart
Bergen's theatre opened in 1850 as Det Norske Theater, on the initiative of the violinist Ole Bull, and Henrik Ibsen worked here as a writer and artistic director in the 1850s. The current building, by the architect Einar Oscar Schou, was completed in 1909.
2Sailors' Monument
The Sailors' Monument by the sculptor Dyre Vaa stands on Torgallmenningen, Bergen's central square. It is a memorial that honours seafarers.
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3Bergen Cathedral
Bergen Cathedral is dedicated to Saint Olaf and first appears in a source in 1181. It has been the diocese's cathedral since 1537, and a cannonball from the Battle of Vågen in 1665, fought between English and Dutch fleets in the harbour, is still lodged in its outer wall.
4Torget Fish Market
Torget is the square at the far end of Vågen, Bergen's old harbour, and is recorded as early as 1278. Fishermen once sold their catch straight from the boats, and the Mathallen food hall, opened in 2012, now houses an indoor fish market.
5Shetlands-Larsen Statue
This statue by the water near Bryggen was erected in 1995 and honours Leif Larsen (1906–1990), a Bergen-born skipper known as Shetlands-Larsen. During the Second World War he made 52 trips to Norway with the Shetland Bus, the fishing boats that secretly carried agents, weapons and supplies.
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6Bryggen
This row of wooden merchant houses on the harbour was the seat of the Hanseatic Kontor in Bergen until 1754, a trading base that had existed since about 1350. About a quarter of its buildings date from after the fire of 1702, and Bryggen has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
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7Bryggens Museum
Bryggens Museum opened in 1976 on land cleared by a fire in 1955. A thirteen-year archaeological excavation that followed uncovered the Bryggen inscriptions, runic writings from everyday life.
8St Mary's Church (Mariakirken)
Mariakirken dates from the early 12th century and is described as Bergen's oldest building. Hanseatic merchants donated its Baroque pulpit, which was given in 1676.
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9Rosenkrantz Tower
The oldest part of the tower is a medieval structure from the 1270s, built during the reign of King Magnus the Lawmender as part of the royal castle. In the 1560s Erik Rosenkrantz, governor of Bergenhus, had Scottish stonemasons and architects expand it into the form you see today.
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10Bergenhus FortressFinish
Bergenhus Fortress occupies the site of Bergen's royal castle. Its hall, Håkonshallen, was built during the reign of King Håkon Håkonsson in the mid-13th century, and it hosted the wedding celebrations of his son Magnus in 1261.
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