What is the Graz outdoor escape game?
The Graz outdoor escape game takes the logic of an escape room out into the old town: you play on your smartphone, and at each of the 10 stops a puzzle asks you to study the surroundings and reason your way to the answer. Plan on about 2 hours, 40 minutes of it on foot over 2.6 km, and begin on a day that suits you.
The puzzles sit at the Opera, the Stadtpark, the Mausoleum of Emperor Ferdinand II, the Cathedral, the Glockenspiel, the Landhaus and the Clock Tower, so every clue is anchored to a real building or square. Each puzzle stands on its own, and up to three levels of hints are there if you get stuck. The old town is compact enough that the route feels like one continuous walk.
- Durationabout 2 hours
- Walkingabout 40 min · 2.6 km
- Stops10
- LanguagesEnglish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Dutch
What you do on the escape game
Solve
Work out the puzzle at each stop by looking hard at what is in front of you and reasoning step by step. You need no prior knowledge of the city.
Read the square
The answers hide in façades, ornaments and the layout of each square, so the building itself is part of the puzzle.
Walk
Google Maps guides you from stop to stop: about 40 minutes on foot over 2.6 km.
Set your pace
Nothing ticks down. Use a hint when you need one, stop for a coffee, and pick the game up again later or on 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 the Graz escape game suits
Groups of friends
A shared puzzle waits at every stop, and the debate over the answer is a big part of the fun.
Couples
You solve together at your own speed, so the outing becomes a run of small shared challenges rather than a list of sights to tick off.
Team building
Teams of up to 5 each use their own phone, so colleagues can compare ideas on the same puzzle without sharing one screen.
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 Mariensäule to the Clock Tower
10 stops · about 40 min walking · start: Mariensäule · finish: Uhrturm
The first puzzle waits at the Mariensäule on Am Eisernen Tor, and the last one at the Clock Tower on the Schlossberg. In between come the Opera, the Stadtpark, the Mausoleum of Emperor Ferdinand II, the Graz Cathedral, the Glockenspiel, the Landhaus and the Town Hall, and the route climbs Sporgasse on its way to the finish. Start in daylight, since the puzzles are solved outdoors and rain or wind slow everything down. You can reorder the stops in the app, and no entry tickets are needed.
Open the route map ↗
1MariensäuleStart
Historically, this Marian column on the square Am Eisernen Tor commemorates the imperial victory over the Ottomans at Mogersdorf in 1664. The Landstände (the provincial estates) and the Stift St. Lambrecht paid for the monument.
2Opera Graz
The Graz opera house opened in 1899 with Schiller's Wilhelm Tell and was designed by the Viennese theatre architects Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer. Its neo-Baroque building is Austria's second largest opera house after Vienna's State Opera, and beside it stands Hartmut Skerbisch's 54-metre Light Sword.
3Graz Stadt Park
The Stadtpark was created in 1869, when the city took over the old glacis of the fortress from the military in exchange for the Feliferhof shooting range. Mayor Moritz von Franck chose an English-style landscape garden, and the Emperor Franz Joseph fountain was designed by Klagmann for the 1873 World Exhibition in Vienna.
4Mausoleum of Emperor Ferdinand II
Emperor Ferdinand II commissioned this Mannerist mausoleum in 1614 together with the neighbouring St Catherine's Church, to a design by Giovanni Pietro de Pomis. Work stalled when Ferdinand was elected emperor in 1619 and left for Vienna, and the oval dome over the burial chapel is said to be the first of its kind built outside Italy.
5Graz Cathedral
Graz Cathedral, dedicated to St Giles, was begun in 1438 on the orders of Emperor Frederick III in Gothic style, and it has been the cathedral of the Graz-Seckau diocese since 1786. The south wall carries a fragmentary painting from around 1485, probably by Thomas von Villach, and the emperor's motto AEIOU appears several times on the building.
6Glockenspiel
Graz's Glockenspiel was installed by the spirits maker Gottfried Maurer and first chimed on Christmas Eve in 1905. Its 24 bells play three melodies at each performance, drawn from around 70 tunes, while a carved wooden couple in Styrian costume dances behind the arched windows.
7Grazer Landhaus
Construction of the Styrian Landhaus began in 1557 to designs by the Italian architect Domenico dell'Allio. Its arcaded courtyard counts among the most important Renaissance buildings in Central Europe, and the Styrian provincial parliament still meets here, beside the Landeszeughaus armoury.
8Grazer Rathaus
The neo-Baroque town hall on the Hauptplatz was built between 1887 and 1893. In the middle of the square stands the Archduke John Fountain of 1878, whose base shows the four Styrian rivers: the Mur, Enns, Drava and Sann.
9Sporgasse
Sporgasse climbs from the Hauptplatz towards the Schlossberg, passing old burgher houses such as the Luegg-Haus with its stucco facade. Nearby, the court bakery Edegger-Tax has a carved wooden shop front from 1896, crowned by a gilded double-headed eagle.
10UhrturmFinish
The clock tower on the Schlossberg has a core dating from the 13th century and reached its present form in 1560. After the French siege of 1809, which left the rest of the hilltop fortress to be demolished, Graz citizens bought the tower free and saved it, and its larger, gilded hand is the hour hand.
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