Escape to Museum of Mazes

There's a route straight from the centre of the Jubilee Maze to the Museum of Mazes - which isn't a bit like a Museum - it's more like a wall of puzzles you can do, all about solving mazes. You can build your own mazes, or use interactive computer displays to draw them for you. The whole idea is that you have to touch everything. This is your chance to explore mazes from all over the world... hands-on!

There are two exhibitions:

Mazes and Mysteries

This is about the history of mazes. "Traditional" hedge mazes, which we all know and love, in fact only go back 600 years. Before then, mazes were symbols of mystic and moral beliefs which concealed an ancient magic pattern-making puzzle. They probably reached America during the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago, entering written history through the Ancient Greeks only 2,500 years ago.

Mazes and Micros

This exhibition explores the future of mazes. It's about solving the mazes of technology, like the telephone network, circuit-boards inside computers, and the highway system. Mazes and Micros also demonstrates the chaos at the heart of the puzzle of the ancient labyrinths, a principle which has only recently been discovered by mathematicians.The Museum of Mazes is about history and mystery, myths and maths, art and anthropology. The length of each brick in the floor of the Museum of Mazes represents a generation in the known history of mazes - but nobody knows how old they really are !

There's too much here to take in at one time, so the Museum of Mazes is designed for you to browse awhile, then take a break and return to it again and again. It's fascinating for adults and fun for children - just have a go!