The Best Sherlock Holmes Sites in London

No place brings the stories of Sherlock Holmes to life like London, the home of both the fictional detective and his real-life inventor. The city now honors the detective’s adventures with attractions and memorials, so even though he was an invented character, you can still have a Holmsian experience exploring his haunts in the city.

Only in London can you step inside replicas of the legendary detective’s study at his real address or have a pint at a historic pub frequented by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer who created Holmes and Watson. In London, fans can also walk through locations from the BBC/PBS Sherlock series or earlier, lesser-known adaptations of Doyle’s beloved tales.

With a little detective work—very little, in fact, since we’re about to guide you—you can see where Doyle got his inspiration and sample Holmes’ London.

The Sherlock Holmes pub

10 Northumberland Street; Tube: Charing Cross

Have a pint or fish and chips at the pub where Holmes tracked down Francis Hay Moulton in The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor. In the book, it was called the Northumberland Arms, but the building it occupies, which is centrally located just southeast of Trafalgar Square, was also originally the Northumberland Hotel from The Hound of the Baskervilles. Holmes and Watson frequented the Victorian Turkish baths upstairs, popping into the pub afterward. “Both Holmes and I had a weakness for the Turkish bath. It was over a smoke in the pleasant lassitude of the drying-room that I have found him less reticent and more human than anywhere else,” Watson wrote in The Adventure of the Illustrious Client.

There’s a replica of Holmes’ study upstairs and lots of memorabilia throughout the pub, including an old service revolver like the one Watson might have carried. Look out for the plush goose, a nod to The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. Doyle died in 1930, but his descendants were consulted for the study’s design. The items on display inside also have a story: They were collected for a Sherlock Holmes exhibition for the Festival of Britain, a pivotal post-war event for London, in 1951.

The Sherlock Holmes Museum

221B Baker Street, between 237 and 241 Baker Street; Tube: Baker Street

Head to a familiar address: 221B Baker Street. Why does the four-story Georgian townhouse of the Sherlock Holmes Museum sit out of numerical order between 237 and 241? That is itself a kind of mystery that the consulting detective might have been asked to unravel: When the museum opened, the real 221 Baker Street was occupied by a bank, but in 1990, the museum was re-assigned the famous address number in tribute to the character.

Like the fictional townhouse where Holmes lived, the building housing his namesake museum was once a lodging house like the one he and Watson were living in when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle introduced them to the world through A Study in Scarlet in 1877. The museum recreates Holmes’ study and his and Watson’s bedrooms, filling them with items reminiscent of Holmes’ Persian slippers, violin and chemistry set, and things from Watson’s medical bag.

The space itself doesn’t appear in Holmes’ stories, and tickets can feel expensive for an attraction that’s a simulation of nonexistent characters that you can experience in a half-hour. If you’re a hardcore fan who appreciates kitschy souvenirs, you may enjoy the gift shop, but if you’re traveling on a budget, you can grab a photo of the front door and visit the study at The Sherlock Holmes pub for the price of a drink instead.

Baker Street Underground 

Marylebone Road; Tube: Baker Street

Look for the 1993 statue of Sherlock Holmes at Marylebone and Baker Streets and enter the Baker Street Tube station, one of the oldest Underground stations in London. The brick-vaulted Circle Line portion of the station opened in 1863 for wooden carriages pulled by steam locomotives, just in time for Holmes, who began unraveling mysteries from his flat a couple of blocks away in 1887.  “This is the station he often left from,” says Nicholas Player, a Blue Badge tour guide for the Tour Guy and other guiding companies. The stop retains many of its historical features, but in our times, it added illustrations of well-known Sherlock Holmes cases and, on the platforms of the Bakerloo line, tile motifs of a hat-wearing Holmes with a pipe in his mouth.

The British Museum

Great Russell Street; Tube: Tottenham Court Road

The British Museum in Bloomsbury (specifically, in its Reading Room) was one of Holmes’ preferred locations for researching cases. It’s where Henry Baker works in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle and where Holmes goes to read up on voodoo in Wisteria Lodge. He also uses the British Museum collection to research the villain Stapleton in The Hound of the Baskervilles. Spend some time wandering the streets of Bloomsbury, surrounding the museum. Doyle once lived in this area, and he used his former street of Montague Place as the address for Violet Hunter, who writes Holmes for help in The Copper Beeches. Another neighborhood thoroughfare, Montague Street, is the first place in London where Holmes lived, a detail revealed in The Musgrave Ritual.

Criterion Restaurant 

224 Piccadilly; Tube: Piccadilly Circus

Now it’s an Indian chain restaurant called Masala Zone, but this opulent Neo-Byzantine restaurant situated directly on Piccadilly Circus was where Watson meets the friend who introduced him to Holmes in 1881, an event chronicled in A Study in Scarlet. “I was standing at the Criterion Bar, when some one tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Stamford,” Watson recalls.

Look for a plaque commemorating the fictional meeting inside the landmark, which opened in 1873. The bar where Watson and Stamford met was, at the time, one of the more fashionable establishments in London.

The Langham, London 

1C Portland Place; Tube: Oxford Circus

The restaurant at this luxury hotel opposite the BBC is where Doyle attended a dinner with Oscar Wilde in 1889. That dinner inspired Wilde to write his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Doyle to write the magazine article that would become The Sign of Four. The Langham is also a favorite of Holmes’ clients. It’s where Count Von Kramm stayed in A Scandal in Bohemia, where Phillip Green stayed in The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax, and where Captain Arthur Morstan stayed a decade before his daughter hired Holmes in Captain Morstan. You could dine here, as Doyle and Wilde did, but another authentic way to see the hotel is by making a reservation in its Palm Court (pictured above)—afternoon tea as we know it was first served to Londoners in this room in 1865, and now the hotel is often called the birthplace of the tradition.

Speedy’s Sandwich Bar & Cafe 

187 N. Gower Street; Tube: Euston Square

If you can only think of Benedict Cumberbatch from the 2010–2017 BBC/PBS series when you think of Sherlock, stop for a coffee or tea at Speedy’s, found a couple of blocks north of the Euston Square Underground station. This was the cafe nearest to Holmes’ front door and where Watson met with Mycroft Holmes to discuss how they would break the death of Irene Adler, to whom he was romantically linked, to Holmes. The cafe kept its real name and exterior signage during the filming of Sherlock.

Russell Square

Russell Square; Tube: Russell Square

Fans of the series BBC/PBS series Sherlock will likely recognize Russell Square, the lush urban green space where Holmes and Watson often rendezvous. The square’s manicured gardens are where Watson meets the old friend who introduces him to Holmes in the series premiere. Look for the Imperial Hotel facade, which served as the backdrop of the conversation Watson and Stamford had while sitting on a park bench.

Ye Old Cheshire Cheese

145 Fleet Street; Tube: Blackfriars

One of the oldest pubs in London, this Fleet Street institution hidden in an ancient narrow alley traces its history to 1538 and has long been a destination for writers. Mark Twain, Agatha Christie, Alfred Tennyson, and Doyle are just a few of the wordsmiths who frequented Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, leading some Sherlock Holmes readers to associate this pub with the Fleet Street setting of The Red-Headed League. “[Doyle] drank there, and he used the places he liked in his books,” Player said. Fleet Street is where Jabez Wilson, who hires Sherlock Holmes in the story, works, so the Ye Old Cheshire Cheese could easily have been the detective’s regular pub, too. (It’s certainly one of our favorites, down to the stuffed parrot who has been above the bar for a century; pictured above.) The street-level rooms are the more refined spaces, or have a pint in the eerie atmospheric downstairs cellar.

Walking Tours

Sherlock-themed walking tours (usually £17–£20 per person) are fairly common, competing with Jack the Ripper- and Harry Potter-themed ones with a blend of location-hunting and comic narration by guides. What you’ll see depends on the guide you get, but most Sherlock tours will visit a few sights from Sherlock Holmes stories and tend to wind up at the Sherlock Holmes Pub (mentioned above), where you’ll have time for a pint while you inspect the recreation of Holmes’ study upstairs. Some of the ones we recommend are by the long-running London Walks, which offers a few, including a special one that only runs around Christmas, and from Brit Movie Tours, which runs one that specializes in his appearances in many movies, TV shows, and stage entertainments.