With the recent DVD release of “Sherlock Holmes,” there’s never been a better time to check out the famous detective’s favorite London haunts. Our Metro Travel sleuths have tracked down their favorite must-do Holmes tourist attractions.
St. Paul’s Cathedral
This 300-year-old iconic building and steep staircase in the dome was used for action scenes in the Guy Ritchie movie and it is hard to think of a building more quintessentially London. It was built after the city’s Great Fire in 1675 and survived everything the Luftwaffe could throw at it. Don’t miss the climb to the top — it’s worth it.
Simpson’s-in-the-Strand
This restaurant feels like stepping back into the Sherlock Holmes era. Indeed, Dr. Watson describes dinner at the restaurant in 1902 while “looking down at the rushing stream of life on the Strand.” The menu is a touch more contemporary now but that’s not why you’re here — order the finest beef in London and a bottle of Claret.
The British Museum
Holmes uses the British Museum, with its famous circular reading room, for all his criminal research. It’s a superb museum of antiquities — almost none of which are actually British. Across the road is the Museum Tavern, which is the actual pub in Holmes’s Christmas tale “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.” When he came to London in the 1870s, Holmes “lived” around the corner on Montague Street, near where Doyle himself lived when he moved to London.
