What is the Venice outdoor escape game?
The Venice outdoor escape game is an escape room played in the alleys instead of a sealed room: a puzzle is waiting at each landmark and you solve it on your phone, by observing the place and thinking it through. Reckon on about 2 hours, with 38 minutes of walking over 3 km and 10 stops, and open the game on a day that suits you.
The puzzles sit where Venice is at its most Venetian: the brick bulk of the Frari, the wide expanse of Campo San Polo, the shop-lined ramps of the Rialto Bridge, Teatro La Fenice, St Mark's Square with the Basilica and the Doge's Palace, and the leaning bell tower of San Giorgio dei Greci. Nothing links the puzzles into a story, each one stands alone, and three levels of hints are there for the stubborn ones. Venice has no traffic, so every stretch between puzzles is a walk over bridges and through alleys.
- Durationabout 2 hours
- Walkingabout 38 min · 3 km
- Stops10
- LanguagesEnglish, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Chinese
What you do on the escape game
Solve
A puzzle waits at every landmark, answered by observation and logic rather than knowledge. Nothing to prepare.
Look closer
The clues are in mosaics, carved stone, columns and the façades around each campo.
Walk
Google Maps keeps you on course through the alleys: 38 minutes of walking in all, over about 3 km.
Take your time
No countdown is running. Use a hint if a puzzle will not yield, stop for a spritz 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
A reason to look closely at Venice rather than drift through it, with something to work out at each stop.
Couples
Puzzles over bridges and across quiet campi, with the pace entirely up to the two of you.
Team building
Teams of up to 5 play on their own phones, so colleagues only need to agree where to meet.
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 Frari to San Giorgio dei Greci
10 stops · about 38 min walking · start: Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari · finish: San Giorgio dei Greci
The first puzzle is at the Basilica dei Frari in San Polo, and Campo San Polo follows before the Rialto Bridge takes you over the Grand Canal. Campo San Salvador on the Mercerie and Teatro La Fenice come next, and they bring you into St Mark's Square, where the Basilica and the Doge's Palace each hold a puzzle of their own. Castello closes the route with the Church of San Zaccaria and, last of all, San Giorgio dei Greci. Play in daylight, as the alleys are solved on sight and rain makes them slower. Navigation runs through Google Maps, the stop order is yours to rearrange in the app, and nothing on the way needs an entry ticket.
Open the route map ↗
1Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei FrariStart
The Frari is the great brick church of the Franciscans in Venice, consecrated in 1492. Over the high altar hangs Titian's Assumption of the Virgin, put in place in 1518, and the church also holds a monument to Titian and the pyramid-shaped monument to the sculptor Antonio Canova, made by his pupils.
2Campo San Polo
Campo San Polo is the largest campo in Venice, second in size only to St Mark's Square among the city's open spaces. Paved in 1493, it once hosted bullfights, sermons and masked balls, and it is still used for Carnival events and open-air screenings, framed by the Church of San Polo and old palaces such as Palazzo Soranzo.
Read the full story →
3Rialto Bridge
The Rialto Bridge is the oldest of the four bridges across the Grand Canal. Antonio da Ponte built it in stone between 1588 and 1591 to replace a wooden bridge that had collapsed more than once, and its covered ramps still carry rows of shops.
4Campo San Salvador
Campo San Salvador, on the Mercerie shopping street, is framed by the Church of San Salvador, which holds two paintings by Titian, and by the Scuola Grande di San Teodoro. The marble column in the middle was set up in 1898 in memory of the Venetian uprising against Austrian rule in 1848–1849, and a cannonball from 1849 is still lodged in the church façade.
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5Teatro La Fenice
Teatro La Fenice, the Phoenix, opened in 1792 and has lived up to its name: it burned down in 1836 and again in an arson fire in 1996, and each time it was rebuilt, most recently reopening in 2003. Giuseppe Verdi's operas Rigoletto and La Traviata had their world premieres here.
6St Mark's Square
Venetians simply call St Mark's Square the Piazza, while most other squares in the city are called campi. It is framed by the long arcades of the Procuratie, and its bell tower, 98.6 metres high, is a faithful rebuild: the original collapsed on 14 July 1902, and the new tower was inaugurated in 1912.
7St Mark's Basilica
St Mark's Basilica was built to house the relics of St Mark, which, according to tradition, Venetian merchants smuggled out of Alexandria in 828 hidden under pork. The present 11th-century church is covered with about 8,000 square metres of mosaics, and the bronze horses on its façade are copies of the originals brought from Constantinople after 1204.
8Doge's Palace
The Gothic Doge's Palace was the residence of the doge and the seat of the Venetian Republic's government and courts. Its prisons are reached across the Bridge of Sighs, built around 1600, and in 1756 Giacomo Casanova escaped from the Piombi, the cells under its lead roof.
9Church of San Zaccaria
The Church of San Zaccaria was built between 1458 and 1515, begun in Gothic style by Antonio Gambello and completed with a Renaissance façade by Mauro Codussi. It belonged to a wealthy Benedictine convent, several doges are buried in its crypt, and inside hangs Giovanni Bellini's San Zaccaria Altarpiece.
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10San Giorgio dei GreciFinish
San Giorgio dei Greci was built from 1539 to 1573 for the large Greek Orthodox community of Venice and is one of the oldest churches of the Greek diaspora. Look for its leaning bell tower beside the canal; inside, the iconostasis holds icons by Michael Damaskinos, and since 1991 it has been the cathedral of the Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy.
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Lisa B. (verified owner) –
Brilliant
Lynn– United Kingdom –
Collected on GetYourGuide
The gondola, the little museum with vtr, the walking tour to the gondola with loads of info and the ride with commentary the Gondolier was brilliant would do it again
Nikolay– Austria –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Ich hatte ein technisches Problem. Dies wurde innerhalb 2 Minuten per Whatsapp gelöst. Super Möglichkeit um einen interessanten Spaziergang mit einem Kind zu planen.
Nikolay– Austria –
Collected on GetYourGuide
Ich hatte ein technisches Problem. Dies wurde innerhalb 2 Minuten per Whatsapp gelöst. Super Möglichkeit um einen interessanten Spaziergang mit einem Kind zu planen.