Athens escape room recreates 20th century history

Athens on a winter’s day in February, 10.30 a.m. The US-Greece Strategic Dialogue has ended, the Russians are continuing the war in Ukraine, and the crisis in the Middle East is raging. The “agency” has assigned me to investigate a mysterious escape room, one of those places that attracts groups of people eager to solve puzzles or experience a little suspense for fun.

Opposite me, on the ground floor of 16 Lambelet Street in the Athens district of Kolonos, sits Stefanos Lolos, an actor with experience in escape rooms, but also a lover of makeshift construction. “Athens is considered the mecca of escape rooms,” he says. “There are so many that people come from Europe and America to play.”

I sink deeper into my role, wondering if I can trust him – a journalist must always be vigilant. Besides, Lolos, together with Christos Karasavvidis, co-founders of the production company Kar.Lo, have built an entire escape room which recreates an old CIA hideout in Athens supposedly abandoned since 1985. Using old family furniture, military radios and crates found at flea markets and antique shops, newspaper headlines about the Cold War, the Athens Polytechnic Uprising and the Metapolitefsi period between the fall of the junta and Greece’s return to democracy in 1974, and a 19th century safe, the two partners set up the escape room and named it

‘We felt that one of the elements missing from escape rooms was plausibility,’ Stefanos Lolos points out, adding, ‘And what’s more believable than using real stories?’

Who knows what tricks they used to make it difficult even for experienced players? Players must crack secret codes, consult old agents and connect real historical events in order to deactivate a powerful weapon mechanism that has just been activated, all within two hours.

“We felt that one of the elements missing from escape rooms was plausibility,” Lolos points out, adding, “And what’s more believable than using real stories?”

“The risk of getting into trouble,” I want to reply, but I stop myself. After all, he seems to have done a good job. For example, the puzzles that the players have to solve have a fairly coherent logic and are linked to events such as the assassination of peace activist Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963, the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal, the assassination of CIA station chief Richard Welch by the now defunct Greek terrorist organization 17 November in 1975, Andreas Papandreou’s threat to pull Greece out of NATO and remove US military bases from the country, and more.

The teams have to “unlock” five rooms until they reach the last one and defuse a bomb (by cutting the right wire, of course), using declassified CIA documents, telephones with coded messages, bookcases that are not just bookcases, hidden tunnels and much more that is best left undisclosed. Also involved is an actor who plays an agent of somewhat “limited” intelligence and who, when necessary, subtly helps the players with his gaffes. “He’s a bit like Inspector Clouseau,” Lolos explains, dropping a subtle hint.

From 10 to 70 years old

In any case, it seems that the humorous element is also there to keep the interest of those who are not very familiar with history. Not that you have to be a history buff to play at The Hideout. In the three years it has been open, players have ranged in age from 10 to 70. “The majority are between 25 and 45, and those who are around 40 and up are very impressed by the historical part. Especially when they see something they have lived through, they can relate to it,” says Lolos.

Equally interesting is the fact that this particular room, with all its hidden and visible mechanisms, was built during the quarantine period of the Covid-19 pandemic by Lolos and Karasavvidis alone, who used their knowledge of construction to build everything almost from scratch. But how did they manage to make, say, the documents look like those from past eras? “It’s very simple,” Lolos notes, explaining a method that I have no reason to question: “You take a piece of paper and dip it in a small pan with a little Greek coffee. Then you bake it for a few minutes in the oven, and when it’s dry, it’s ready.”