What is the Dortmund outdoor escape game?
The Dortmund outdoor escape game takes the escape room format out onto the city's streets: you play on your smartphone, and at each of the 10 landmarks a puzzle asks you to read the place and reason your way to the answer. Set aside about 2 hours, with 42 minutes of walking over 3.1 km, and pick a day that suits you.
The puzzles draw on Dortmund's landmarks themselves: the golden U above the former brewery, the winged rhinoceros of the Konzerthaus, the Eagle Tower on the old city wall. Each puzzle stands alone, so no storyline is needed, and three levels of hints are available. The compact centre sits inside the ring road that still follows the old walls, so the route stays easy to manage.
- Durationabout 2 hours
- Walkingabout 42 min · 3.1 km
- Stops10
- LanguagesEnglish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch
What you do on the escape game
Solve
Crack the puzzle at each stop by observing the surroundings and thinking it through. No prior knowledge of Dortmund is needed.
Read the façades
Clues hide in the architecture, the ornament and the squares, from the brick of the U-Tower to the clean lines of the museum.
Walk
Follow Google Maps from the western edge of the centre to the City Garden: about 42 minutes on foot across 3.1 km.
Take your time
No countdown runs. Use hints when you are stuck, pause for a coffee 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 day out
Each puzzle gives the group something new to debate, and nobody has to know Dortmund beforehand.
Couples
A shared challenge that keeps you talking as you move between landmarks, with no clock ticking away.
Team building
Teams of up to 5 play on their own phones, so colleagues can split the puzzles or tackle them together.
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 U-Tower to the City Garden
10 stops · about 42 min walking · start: Dortmunder U · finish: Stadtgarten
The first puzzle waits at the Dortmunder U west of the centre, and the last one in the Stadtgarten, a green park on the southern edge of the old town. In between you pass the German Football Museum by the main station, the Museum of Art and Cultural History, the Konzerthaus, St Reinold's Church, the Propsteikirche, the Hiroshima square, the Old Town House and the Eagle Tower. Daylight makes the best start, because the puzzles are solved outdoors and rain slows the game. Google Maps guides you between stops, you can reorder them in the app, and no entry tickets are needed.
Open the route map ↗
1Dortmunder UStart
This tall brick building was built in the 1920s as a high-rise for the Union brewery, and the golden illuminated U on its roof was added in 1968. Since 2010 it has been a centre for art and creativity and home to the Museum Ostwall. Look up at the roof, where moving images by the film-maker Adolf Winkelmann light up after dark.
2German Football Museum
Germany's national football museum, run by the German Football Association (DFB), opened in 2015 directly opposite Dortmund's main station. Its exhibitions cover trophies, famous matches and the history of the game in Germany, which suits a city known far beyond its borders for Borussia Dortmund.
3Museum of Art and Cultural History
The museum occupies an Art Deco building from the 1920s that was originally built for the city savings bank. Its collections trace the history of Dortmund and its region from early times to the 20th century, together with paintings, furniture and design. Take a look at the clean, geometric lines of the façade.
4Konzerthaus Dortmund
Dortmund's concert hall opened in 2002 in the Brückstraße quarter and has about 1,500 seats. Its glass front glows in the evening, and its emblem is a rhinoceros with wings, a symbol of the hall's strength and lightness.
5St Reinold's Church
This Protestant church is named after Dortmund's patron saint and is one of the oldest in the city, with a Romanesque nave from the 13th century and a late Gothic choir. According to legend, the cart carrying Reinold's body rolled on its own from Cologne to Dortmund and stopped where the church now stands.
6Propsteikirche St. Johann Baptist
The main Catholic church of the city centre was built in the 14th and 15th centuries as the church of a Dominican friary. In keeping with the simple style of the Dominicans, it has no tall tower. Inside is a large late 15th-century altarpiece by the painter Derick Baegert.
7Platz von Hiroshima
This small square is named after the Japanese city of Hiroshima, destroyed by an atomic bomb in August 1945. A sculpture here, known as Mutter Hiroshima (Mother Hiroshima), remembers the victims and stands as a call for peace.
Read the full story →
8Altes Stadthaus
The Old Town House was built at the end of the 19th century in neo-Renaissance style to give the growing city administration more space. Its decorated façade with gables and ornaments is one of the few reminders of that period in a centre largely destroyed by bombing in the Second World War.
9Adlerturm
The Adlerturm, or Eagle Tower, was rebuilt in 1992 on the foundations of a tower of Dortmund's medieval city wall. Inside, a museum shows the fortifications and daily life in the medieval Hanseatic and imperial city. The ring road around the centre, known as the Wall, still follows the line of the old walls.
10StadtgartenFinish
The City Garden is a green park on the southern edge of the old town, next to the buildings of the city administration. Its lawns and old trees offer a quiet break from the shopping streets, and the Stadtgarten station beneath it is one of the main junctions of Dortmund's light rail network.
Only logged in customers who have purchased this product may leave a review.
Jenny– Germany –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Netter Stadtspaziergang mot einfacher, aber spaßigen Rätseln
Ekaterina– Germany –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Wir haben zuzweit mit meinem Sohn gespielt, viel Spaß gehabt.