What is the Melbourne outdoor escape game?
The Melbourne outdoor escape game is an escape room brought out into the open: the puzzles sit in the city streets, you play them on your phone, and at each of the 10 stops you work out the answer from what stands around you. Set aside about 2 hours, including 64 minutes on foot over roughly 5 km, and pick your own starting time.
Puzzles wait at St Paul's Cathedral, the domed State Library Victoria, the bluestone Old Melbourne Gaol, Queen Victoria Market and the former Royal Mint that now holds the Hellenic Museum. No storyline links them, so each puzzle is a fresh start, and up to three levels of hints keep you moving. The flat city grid keeps every walk between stops short.
- Durationabout 2 hours
- Walkingabout 64 min · 5 km
- Stops10
- LanguagesEnglish, German, Greek, Italian, Chinese
What you do on the escape game
Work it out
At every stop a puzzle is solved on the spot, from what you can see around you. No prior knowledge of Melbourne is needed.
Read the details
Clues hide in façades, inscriptions, statues and the shape of the street, so slow down and look twice.
Walk the grid
Google Maps points you to the next puzzle: 64 minutes of walking spread over roughly 5 km.
Play at your pace
No clock counts down. Take hints when you want them, break for coffee and carry on 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 it suits
Friends
Everyone plays on their own phone and gets to argue for their own answer before the group settles on one.
Couples
A challenge to share at an easy pace, with no fixed hour to keep and nobody waiting on you.
Colleagues
Teams of up to 5 suit the format, so a company outing splits into several teams on the same route.
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.
The puzzle route: St Paul's Cathedral to SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium
10 stops · about 64 min walking · start: St Paul's Cathedral · finish: SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium
Puzzle one stands at St Paul's Cathedral, opposite Flinders Street Station; from there the trail climbs Swanston Street and takes in Melbourne Town Hall, St Francis' Church, State Library Victoria, the Old Melbourne Gaol and the Melbourne City Baths. West of there, puzzles sit at Queen Victoria Market and in Flagstaff Gardens. William Street then leads past the Hellenic Museum to the closing puzzle at the SEA LIFE Melbourne Aquarium on the Yarra. Start in daylight, because the puzzles are solved outdoors, reorder them in the app if you like, and leave entry tickets out of it.
Open the route map ↗
1St Paul's CathedralStart
Melbourne's Anglican cathedral stands on the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets, opposite Flinders Street Station. It was designed in Gothic Revival style by the English architect William Butterfield and consecrated in 1891, while its tall spires were only added in the 1920s and 1930s. Outside stands a statue of the navigator Matthew Flinders.
2Melbourne Town Hall
The Town Hall on the corner of Swanston and Collins Streets was built between 1867 and 1870 to a design by the architect Joseph Reed. Its clock tower is named after Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, who laid the foundation stone in 1867. In 1964 the Beatles waved to huge crowds from its balcony.
3St Francis' Church
St Francis' Church on the corner of Elizabeth and Lonsdale Streets is the oldest Catholic church in Victoria, begun in 1841. Before St Patrick's Cathedral was built, it served as Melbourne's first Catholic cathedral. Behind its simple Gothic Revival front it is still one of the busiest churches in the city.
4State Library Victoria
Founded in 1854, State Library Victoria is one of the oldest free public libraries in the world. Its domed La Trobe Reading Room opened in 1913, and the collection includes the armour of the bushranger Ned Kelly. On the front lawn, look for the statues of St George and the dragon and of Joan of Arc.
5Old Melbourne Gaol
This prison on Russell Street was begun in the 1840s in dark bluestone, a volcanic rock used for many early Melbourne buildings, and closed in 1924. The bushranger Ned Kelly was hanged here in 1880. Today it is a museum about crime and punishment in colonial Victoria.
6Melbourne City Baths
The City Baths on Swanston Street opened in their present form in 1904, with striking bands of red brick and cream render and small domes on the roofline. Public baths stood here from 1860, built so that locals would stop bathing in the polluted Yarra River. The building is still a public swimming pool.
7Queen Victoria Market
Queen Victoria Market opened in 1878 and is one of the largest open-air markets in the Southern Hemisphere, with long sheds full of fruit, vegetable, meat and deli stalls. Part of it stands on the site of Melbourne's first cemetery, and many graves still lie beneath the market grounds.
8Flagstaff Gardens
These gardens take their name from the signal station set up on the hill around 1840, where flags told the town below that a ship had arrived. Even earlier, some of the first settlers were buried here, and a monument recalls them. The hill was laid out as a public park in the 1860s.
9Hellenic Museum
The Hellenic Museum on William Street presents Greek art and history in a city with one of the largest Greek communities outside Greece. It occupies the former Royal Mint, a classical building from the 1870s where gold sovereigns were once struck from Victorian gold.
10SEA LIFE Melbourne AquariumFinish
The aquarium sits on the north bank of the Yarra River at the corner of King and Flinders Streets. Inside live sharks, rays and a colony of king and gentoo penguins, while outside the riverside promenade leads back towards the city centre.
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Mills– Australia –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Great fun to explore Melbourne 🙂