Lose yourself in the world’s most impressive labyrinths and mazes

CNN  — 

If the numerous elaborate mazes and labyrinths constructed across the world are any indication, there’s a certain appeal to the feeling of being lost.

These geometric networks of rigid hedges challenge us to navigate our way their the core – or fight our way to an exit.

Mentions of the labyrinth can be found as early as the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, where heroic Theseus was given a ball of thread by the king of Crete’s daughter Ariadne to help him remember the way out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth.

Centuries later, Versailles’ famed labyrinth – which included 39 fountains, each depicting one of Aesop’s fables – became an international attraction when it was completed in 1677, although it was later razed around a century later and replaced with another garden.

One of the best known mazes still in use today is the one at Hampton Court Palace in England. Commissioned around 1700, it covers a third of an acre in the palace’s gardens and takes an entire team of gardeners to maintain the site.

“It’s the UK’s oldest surviving hedge maze,” Graham Dillamore, Gardens Operations Manager at Hampton Court Palace said, “and still proves as popular with visitors today as it was when planted for the amusement of King William III and Queen Mary II over 300 years ago.”

Check out the gallery above to get lost in some of today’s most exciting mazes and labyrinths.