We designed and implemented an educational escape room on particle physics, titled ‘PER me si va ne la fisica recente’, to introduce secondary school students to concepts rarely addressed in formal curricula. The activity combines content-driven puzzles, narrative engagement, and structured debriefing, and is now a permanent installation at the University of Pavia. The study involved around 300 participants, with matched pre-/post-test data available for 232 students. The assessment focused on both curricular and extra-curricular items, as well as on the persistence of common misconceptions. Results show significant conceptual gains, particularly on extra-curricular questions related to the standard model, while misconceptions such as the confusion between antimatter and dark matter proved more resistant. The normalized gain analysis confirms that even short interventions can produce measurable improvements in understanding. This work demonstrates that a low-cost, replicable escape room can effectively engage students with frontier physics and complement classroom teaching. It also highlights the importance of targeted debriefing for addressing persistent misconceptions, contributing to the growing body of evidence on the role of game-based and non-formal strategies in STEM education.