A Self-Guided Sherlock Holmes Walking Tour of London

Somewhere in the Strand this spring, a silver trolley started rolling again after six years of silence. Simpsons-in-the-Strand, Holmes's favourite restaurant in the stories, reopened in March under restaurateur Jeremy King, its roast joints once again wheeled tableside in the hush its old chess-playing regulars insisted on. It felt like the right excuse to walk the rest of Conan Doyle's London while the detective's table is, once again, actually set.

Here are seven real places behind the world's most famous detective, in the order the case takes you through them.

Holmes' House

The address never technically existed. When Conan Doyle wrote it, Baker Street's numbering only reached the low hundreds, which means Holmes and Watson's most famous lodgings were fiction from the very first digit. The building now standing there received so much genuine fan mail addressed to a detective who never lived that its occupants once employed someone full-time just to answer it.

Holmes Meets the King of Bohemia

This is where Holmes places the exiled King of Bohemia, and the choice wasn't random. When it opened in 1865, the Langham called itself Europe's first Grand Hotel and was the first hotel anywhere to give every room its own bathroom, hot water, and hydraulic lift. If a disguised monarch needed somewhere suitably impressive to hide in plain sight, this was London's actual answer.

Watson Hears a Name for the First Time

According to Conan Doyle, this is the bar where Dr. Watson first heard the name Sherlock Holmes, tapped on the shoulder by an old colleague with a story to tell. The restaurant has stood on this site since 1874 and has fed Churchill, Lloyd George, and H.G. Wells since, though these days it trades as Masala Zone.

Mycroft's Club of Silence

Mycroft Holmes belongs to a private club so secretive that talking is banned in its main room. The real building most historians point to as its inspiration is the Reform Club, founded in 1836 on Pall Mall as the political home of the Liberal Party. Fittingly for a story about a man who prefers silence to conversation, some of the century's loudest political campaigns were planned inside it.

Holmes's Favourite Table

Holmes's favourite table, and now, once again, an actual table you can book. Founded in 1828, Simpsons built its reputation on carving roast meats beside diners in total silence, a habit that started because its earliest regulars were chess players who couldn't afford the distraction. Closed since the pandemic, it reopened this March with the same silver trolleys rolling through the same wood-panelled room.

The Sign of Four Rendezvous

In The Sign of Four, Mary Morstan waits nervously at the third pillar outside this theatre for a rendezvous that kicks off one of Holmes's stranger cases. The current building dates from 1904, but the pillars themselves are original, meaning the exact stone Conan Doyle described is still there to lean against.

Where the Partnership Began

The walk ends where the partnership began. This is the hospital where Holmes and Watson first meet, in a chemistry lab down a narrow corridor. It's the oldest hospital in England still standing on its original site, founded in 1123 and somehow still operating after the Reformation, the Great Fire, and the Blitz.

A city that never stopped playing along

London has spent well over a century humouring Arthur Conan Doyle's fiction, answering Sherlock's mail, preserving his pillars, and now, apparently, reopening his restaurant on schedule. Walking these seven stops makes the joke a little more literal: you're not following a character through a city. You're following a city that decided, a long time ago, to keep the character's world running.

If you'd like the full story at every stop, StoryStride has a self-guided Sherlock Holmes walking tour of London, tracing all seven locations above with GPS check-ins along the way. Free to start, with the full route and expanded stop details available in the app.