The Leonardo da Vinci-themed escape room opens at The Queen’s Gallery this week.
Now, when I first heard of an escape room inside Buckingham Palace, I immediately conjured up ideas of some sort of corgi-centric caper, in which one would team up with the Palace Guards to defend Her Majesty’s pets from being dognapped – all under the M-style guidance of Queen Elizabeth, of course. The reality is a little less fanciful, but still rather cool: a Leonardo da Vinci-inspired escape room that opens at The Queen’s Gallery on June 14th, with tickets on sale now.
Leonardo Artmergency!, as the escape room is known, ties in with the gallery’s ongoing exhibition Leonardo da Vinci: A Life in Drawing. Having brought together 200 of the artist’s original drawings – the largest such display for 65 years – in celebration of the 500th anniversary of da Vinci’s death, the Royal Collection Trust decided the next logical step was to host an escape room. That’s the kind of out-of-the-box thinking we do like to see!
Running on Fridays and Saturdays until October, the gallery will be transformed into a four-room labyrinth of puzzles, riddles, and maddening clues. Participants are invited to get up close to the artworks, using the powers of observation and cunning to unlock the mysteries within the drawings, and solve the mystery of the missing curator.
No prior knowledge of da Vinci and art history is required to partake, but if you’re as useless at escape rooms as I am, then it definitely couldn’t hurt. There’s also no word on what happens if you fail to solve the escape room – the gallery have been silent on this, which means I suspect a night locked in the Tower of London awaits…
Location: The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, SW1A 1AA. Nearest station is St James’ Park. See it on Google Maps.
Opening times: every Friday and Saturday until October 5th, with sessions available at 6:15pm, 6:45pm, 7:15pm, and 7:45pm.
Price: £150 per team (teams are between four and eight players). Tickets are available here.
More information: on their website.