What is the Padua outdoor escape game?
The Padua outdoor escape game is a puzzle trail on your smartphone across the historic centre: at each of the 10 sites a puzzle is waiting, and you solve it by looking carefully around you and thinking it through. Expect about 2 hours, with 42 minutes of walking over 3.4 km, and begin on a day that works for you.
The sites bring medieval, Venetian and scientific Padua together: a law court with a ship-hull roof, a clock tower with an astronomical dial, the university where Galileo taught and a square ringed by statues. Each puzzle stands alone with no storyline behind it, and up to three hint levels are available when a riddle holds you up.
- Durationabout 2 hours
- Walkingabout 42 min · 3.4 km
- Stops10
- LanguagesEnglish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch
What you do on the escape game
Deduce
Use the buildings, inscriptions and layout around you to reach the answer. Nothing from before your visit is needed.
Spot the details
Clock dials, statues and façades carry clues, and sometimes the key is the smallest feature.
Stroll
Google Maps takes you from one puzzle to the next: about 42 minutes on foot over roughly 3.4 km.
Go slowly
No countdown is running. Ask for a hint when you need one, rest on a bench and continue 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 on a day out
Each site gives the group a new problem, and nobody needs to know Padua's history beforehand.
Couples
Puzzling side by side through the squares makes a relaxed date, with no timer ticking away.
Team building
Teams of up to 5 each use their own phone, so colleagues can share out the puzzles or pair up.
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 Piazza Garibaldi to Prato della Valle
10 stops · about 42 min walking · start: Piazza Garibaldi · finish: Prato della Valle
The first puzzle sits on Piazza Garibaldi, which the Porta Altinate overlooks. Next come Piazza Cavour, Piazza dei Signori and the cathedral, then the Palazzo della Ragione with the fruit square beside it. The route continues to the University of Padua, the MUSME museum and the Basilica of Saint Anthony, and the last puzzle waits on Prato della Valle. Daylight suits the start, since rain or wind slow outdoor play. Google Maps guides you between sites, the app lets you reorder them, and no entry tickets are needed.
Open the route map ↗
1Piazza GaribaldiStart
This busy square on the edge of the old centre is overlooked by the Porta Altinate, one of the gates of Padua's medieval walls. The brick gate once led to the road towards the Roman town of Altinum, which gave it its name.
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2Piazza Cavour
This square sits at a crossroads of the city centre, a few steps from the Caffè Pedrocchi, a neoclassical building designed by Giuseppe Jappelli and opened in 1831. It was long known as the café without doors, because it stayed open day and night, and students and patriots met there in the 19th century.
3Piazza dei Signori
The square of the lords takes its name from the Carrara family, who ruled Padua in the 14th century from the palace here. Its clock tower carries an astronomical clock based on a 14th-century original by Jacopo Dondi, and its zodiac is said to lack the sign of Libra. A column with the Lion of Saint Mark recalls Venetian rule.
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4Padua Cathedral
The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta was rebuilt from 1551, partly following a design attributed to Michelangelo, and its brick façade was never finished. Beside it stands the Romanesque baptistery, decorated inside with 14th-century frescoes by Giusto de' Menabuoi.
5Palazzo della Ragione
Padua's medieval law court was begun in 1218, and in 1306 it received a roof shaped like an upturned ship's hull. Its upper hall is one of the largest of its kind in Europe, painted with an astrological cycle, and it holds a huge wooden horse and the stone where insolvent debtors were shamed.
6Piazza della Frutta
The fruit square runs along the north side of the Palazzo della Ragione and has been a market place since the Middle Ages. Stalls still fill it most mornings, and under the arches of the palace, the area known as Sotto il Salone, food shops have traded for centuries.
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7University of Padua
Founded in 1222, the University of Padua is one of the oldest in the world, and its historic seat is Palazzo Bo. Galileo Galilei taught here from 1592 to 1610, the anatomical theatre of 1595 is the oldest permanent one in the world, and in 1678 Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia became the first woman to earn a university degree.
8MUSME
MUSME is Padua's museum of the history of medicine, housed in the former hospital of San Francesco Grande, founded in the early 15th century. It uses interactive displays to tell how doctors in Padua, a centre of medical teaching, studied and treated the human body.
9Basilica of Saint Anthony
Il Santo was begun in 1232, a year after the death of Saint Anthony, and mixes Romanesque, Gothic and Byzantine features with its cluster of domes and slender towers. It is one of the most visited pilgrimage churches in the world, and in front of it stands Donatello's bronze Gattamelata, one of the first large equestrian statues since antiquity.
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10Prato della ValleFinish
Prato della Valle is one of the largest squares in Europe, at about 90,000 square metres. It was laid out from 1775 by Andrea Memmo on what had been marshland, with a green island ringed by a canal and 78 statues of famous people linked to Padua and its university.
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