What is the Charleston outdoor escape game?
The Charleston outdoor escape game is an escape room taken out onto the historic streets: you play on your smartphone, and at each of the 10 stops a puzzle waits that you crack by studying the surroundings and thinking it through logically. Allow 2 hours overall, since the walking comes to 43 minutes and the distance to 3 km.
Every puzzle is self-contained, so no storyline ties the stops together, and up to three levels of hints are there if you get stuck. The downtown peninsula suits the format: the landmarks follow one compact route between the harbour and the old market, and looking at the outside of each house, square and building is part of the challenge, from the pastel row of townhouses to the wooden pier at Waterfront Park.
- Durationabout 2 hours
- Walkingabout 43 min · 3 km
- Stops10
- LanguagesEnglish, German, French, Spanish, Portuguese
What you do on the escape game
Solve
Work out the puzzle at every stop by observation and logic. No prior knowledge of Charleston is needed.
Look closer
The clues sit in the surroundings of each landmark, from the façades to the features of each square.
Walk
Follow Google Maps from stop to stop: about 43 minutes of walking across roughly 3 km.
Take your time
There is no countdown. Use hints when you need them, pause for a coffee and come back 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
Each puzzle gives the group something to debate at the next stop, and nobody has to know the city beforehand.
Couples
A shared challenge that keeps you talking as you walk between landmarks, with no clock ticking in the background.
Team building
Teams of up to 5 play on their own phones, which makes it an easy option to arrange for colleagues.
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 The Charleston Museum to Waterfront Park
10 stops · about 43 min walking · start: The Charleston Museum · finish: Waterfront Park
The first puzzle waits at The Charleston Museum and the last at Waterfront Park, with eight stops in between: Marion Square at 329 Meeting Street, Charleston City Market, the Gibbes Museum of Art, Washington Square, the Old Slave Mart Museum, Heyward-Washington House, Rainbow Row and the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon. Daylight makes the best start, because the puzzles are solved outdoors. Google Maps guides you between stops, the app lets you reorder them, and no entry tickets are needed.
Open the route map ↗
1The Charleston MuseumStart
Founded in 1773, the Charleston Museum is often called America's first museum, and today it occupies a modern building on Meeting Street. Its collections cover the natural and cultural history of the Lowcountry. Outside stands a full-size replica of the Hunley, the Confederate submarine that sank a Union warship off Charleston in 1864.
2Marion Square (329 Meeting Street)
This large green on Meeting Street is named after Francis Marion, the Revolutionary War general known as the Swamp Fox. It began as the parade ground of the state arsenal on its north side, which The Citadel military college occupied from 1843 to 1922. Look for the Holocaust memorial and the obelisk dedicated to Wade Hampton.
3Charleston City Market
In 1788 Charles Cotesworth Pinckney and other landowners gave a strip of land for a public market, and the first sheds went up around 1790. The open sheds run about 380 metres from Market Hall, a temple-fronted building completed in 1841, to East Bay Street. Gullah artisans sell their sweetgrass baskets here.
4Gibbes Museum of Art
The Gibbes opened in 1905 in a Beaux-Arts building by Frank Pierce Milburn, paid for by a bequest from James Shoolbred Gibbes. It belongs to the Carolina Art Association, founded in 1858, and its collection focuses on American art connected to Charleston and the South. Notice the Doric columns of the facade.
5Washington Square
This small park beside City Hall opened in 1818 and was renamed for George Washington in 1881, a century after the victory at Yorktown. At its centre stands the Washington Light Infantry memorial, a granite obelisk modelled on the Washington Monument, and a bronze statue of Washington was added in 1999. Look also for the bust of the poet Henry Timrod.
6Old Slave Mart Museum
This building on Chalmers Street was built in 1859 as part of Ryan's Mart, where enslaved people were sold after Charleston banned public slave auctions. Sales continued until about 1863. It is believed to be the last surviving slave auction building in South Carolina, and today it is a museum about the city's role in the slave trade.
7Heyward-Washington House
This double house on Church Street was built in 1772 for Thomas Heyward Jr., one of South Carolina's four signers of the Declaration of Independence. The city rented it for George Washington's week-long visit in May 1791, which gave the house its name. Today the Charleston Museum shows it with American colonial furniture such as the Holmes Bookcase.
8Rainbow Row
Rainbow Row is a run of thirteen historic houses on East Bay Street, most of them built in the 18th century by merchants who kept shops downstairs and lived above. The pastel colours date from restorations in the 1930s and 1940s, starting with a house painted pink in 1931. Legend says the colours helped sailors find their lodgings, but there is no evidence for it.
9Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon
Built between 1767 and 1771 at the foot of Broad Street, the Exchange was the colonial customs house and meeting hall. In 1788 South Carolina's convention ratified the United States Constitution here, and after the British captured the city in 1780 its basement served as a military prison. George Washington greeted the crowds from its balcony in 1791.
10Waterfront ParkFinish
Waterfront Park opened in 1990 along the Cooper River, a project begun by Mayor Joseph Riley and designed by Sasaki Associates. Its centrepiece is the Pineapple Fountain, the pineapple being a traditional symbol of hospitality. The wooden Vendue Wharf pier reaches into the river and has shaded swings with views across the harbour.
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Anonymous (verified owner) –
What beautiful city, nice puzzles