What is the Rotterdam outdoor escape game?
The Rotterdam outdoor escape game is an escape room played in the street: the puzzles are built into the buildings and squares around you, and you solve them on your phone with observation and logic rather than knowledge. Allow about 2 hours, including 54 minutes of walking over 4.2 km and 10 stops, and start whenever it suits you.
Puzzles are set at the Cube Houses, the Witte Huis, the Laurenskerk, the Erasmus Bridge and the De Boeg monument, each one independent of the others and backed by up to three levels of hints. Rotterdam is unusually good at this: the centre was rebuilt after the bombing of May 1940, so a medieval church, an 1898 office tower and a 1980s cube can stand within sight of each other and give each puzzle a different kind of detail to work with.
- Durationabout 2 hours
- Walkingabout 54 min · 4.2 km
- Stops10
- LanguagesEnglish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch
What you do on the escape game
Solve
Each landmark holds one puzzle you crack by reading the building and reasoning. Nothing to know beforehand.
Look closer
A tilted window frame, white glazed brick, the shape of a bronze monument: the answers are in the architecture.
Walk
Google Maps leads from one stop to the next: 54 minutes of walking and 4.2 km over flat ground.
Take your time
No countdown runs. Take a hint, stop at the Oude Haven for a drink and continue 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
Ten puzzles and a flat route, so the group can keep talking instead of catching its breath on hills.
Couples
Something to work out together, with the harbour, the river and the bridge turning up along the way.
Colleagues
Teams of up to 5 play on their own phones, which makes an afternoon out of the office simple to arrange.
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 City Hall to the Calandmonument
10 stops · about 54 min walking · start: City Hall (Stadhuis) · finish: Calandmonument
The opening puzzle is at City Hall on the Coolsingel, one of the few pre-war buildings still standing in the centre, and the route then crosses to the Laurenskerk and on to the Cube Houses at Blaak. The Witte Huis by the Oude Haven comes next, then the Maritime Museum on the Leuvehaven, the Waalse Kerk and the De Boeg monument before the Erasmus Bridge. The last two puzzles are at the Wereldmuseum on the Willemskade and at the Calandmonument. Start in daylight, since every puzzle is outdoors and wind off the Maas can be sharp; the app lets you reorder the stops, and no entry tickets are needed anywhere.
Open the route map ↗
1City Hall (Stadhuis)Start
Rotterdam's City Hall on the Coolsingel was built between 1914 and 1920 to designs by Henri Evers, with a tall tower above its main front. It was one of the few buildings in the city centre to survive the German bombing of May 1940, which destroyed most of the old town around it.
2St Lawrence Church (Laurenskerk)
The Grote of Sint-Laurenskerk, built between 1449 and 1525, is the only late medieval building left in Rotterdam's city centre. The bombing of 1940 left it a burnt-out shell, but it was restored after the war. In front of it stands Hendrick de Keyser's bronze statue of Erasmus from 1622, one of the oldest bronze statues in the Netherlands.
Read the full story →
3Cube Houses
Architect Piet Blom designed these yellow cube-shaped homes, built between 1977 and 1984, each tilted by 45 degrees and set on a hexagonal pillar. He imagined each house as a tree and the whole complex as a forest above the street, and one cube is set up as a show home for visitors.
4Witte Huis (White House)
Completed in 1898, the Witte Huis by the Oude Haven was one of the first high-rise office buildings in Europe. Its Art Nouveau façade of white glazed brick survived the bombing of 1940, and today the building is a national monument.
Read the full story →
5Maritime Museum
The Maritime Museum Rotterdam on the Leuvehaven was founded in 1874 and tells the story of shipping and of the port of Rotterdam, the largest in Europe. Outside, in the Leuvehaven, historic ships and harbour cranes form an open-air harbour museum.
6Waalse Kerk
The Waalse Kerk is the church of Rotterdam's Walloon congregation, one of the French-speaking Protestant communities founded in Dutch cities by refugees from the Southern Netherlands and later joined by Huguenots from France. For centuries these churches held their services in French, and the name still recalls the Walloons who founded them.
7De Boeg
This monument by the sculptor Wessel Couzijn, unveiled in 1957, honours the seamen of the Dutch merchant navy who lost their lives in the Second World War. Its name means the bow, and its abstract bronze form recalls the bow of a ship forcing its way through the waves.
8Erasmus Bridge
The Erasmus Bridge, designed by Ben van Berkel and opened in 1996, links the city centre with the Kop van Zuid on the south bank of the Nieuwe Maas. Its asymmetric white pylon, 139 metres high, earned it the nickname The Swan, and the bridge is about 800 metres long.
9Wereldmuseum
The Wereldmuseum on the Willemskade was founded in 1885 as Rotterdam's museum of ethnology. Its collections bring together objects from cultures in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania, and the building looks out over the Maas, where ships set off for those distant places.
10CalandmonumentFinish
This monument honours the engineer Pieter Caland, who lived from 1826 to 1902 and designed the Nieuwe Waterweg. The canal, opened in 1872, gave Rotterdam a direct deep-water route to the North Sea and laid the foundation for the growth of its port into one of the largest in the world.
Only logged in customers who have purchased this product may leave a review.
United Kingdom –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Liked it a lot
Chantal– Netherlands –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Goed én duidelijke beschrijving ook naar elke locatie. Afstanden echt prima te doen en ook de mogelijkheid om tussendoor even te stoppen
Chantal – Netherlands –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Goed ?n duidelijke beschrijving ook naar elke locatie. Afstanden echt prima te doen en ook de mogelijkheid om tussendoor even te stoppen
Samarth – Germany –
Collected on GetYourGuide
The selection of spots were decent and the only saving grace. Puzzles are poorly designed. It would be nice if some effort is put into giving info of the places we visit. Maybe something like solving a puzzle unlocks a new piece of information that wasn’t accessible before. If not you’re better off just searching for tourist spots at a location and figuring out your own walking route, while reading the Wikipedia entry of the city. Wouldn’t recommend it at this stage. Hopefully it improves in the future
Anita – Belgium –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Deze wandeling was vlak rond ons hotel dus hadden we zelf al allemaal gezien . Niet echt veel uitleg verder ..
Xenia –
Collected on GetYourGuide
So sieht man Orte, an die man von selbst nicht hin w?re ??
Marlies– Netherlands –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Leuk! Je komt op plekken die je normaal gesproken niet snel zal bezoeken.
Sam – Germany –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Spitze!
Mazeron– France –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Tr?s bonne application pour d?couvrir Rotterdam tout en s’arr?tant quand et o? on veut! je recommande!