Video surveillance systems are used to monitor public places, streets, buildings, cities and other premises or surroundings and comprise a multitude of cameras which are monitoring relevant points in the surroundings. One of the problems of surveillance systems is, that the multitude of cameras produce a large amount of video data to be monitored, which requires a lot of human observers resulting in high personnel costs. A video retrieval system (1) connectable to a plurality of surveillance cameras (2) for monitoring a surroundings is proposed, the video retrieval system (1) comprising: displaying means (12) realized to display a graphical overall description (100, 130, 140) of the surroundings under surveillance, whereby the graphical overall description (100, 130, 140) comprises a plurality of monitored areas (110), whereby the areas are allocated to different surveillance cameras (2) and whereby the graphical overall description (100, 130, 140) is displayed in a single perspective view, and querying means (10) realized to formulate a trajectory-specific search (150, 160) query adapted to retrieve data about a moving object in the surroundings with a matching trajectory.