221B Baker Street, London
221B Baker Street, London

This month, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows will hit the theaters.

There are few characters most closely associated with London than Sherlock Holmes. Given the amount of Holmes’ sites in London, you wouldn’t know he was a fictional creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Upon arriving at the Baker Street Tube station, the Metropolitan Line walls are covered in scenes from Holmes stories and if you exit on Marylebone Road, you’ll come upon a 9-foot statue of Holmes in his famous deerstalker hat.

Just around the corner on Baker Street is perhaps the most famous address in London, 221B Baker Street. And although Holmes may be fiction, the address is real. There sits the Sherlock Holmes Museum, a faithful recreation of what Holmes’ and Watson’s flat rented from Mrs. Hudson would have looked like as described in the books, complete with a blue historical marker denoting the years Holmes’ would have spent in the home. Upton entering the building and walking up the 17 steps (as mentioned in “A Scandal in Bohemia”) you are surrounded with ‘artifacts,’ wax figures of characters, and other potential belongings of Holmes. Usually an actor playing Holmes or Mrs. Hudson will greet you in the museum as well. Below is a gift shop complete with deerstalker hats and pipes you could imagine Holmes using himself.

Just off Trafalgar Square on Northumberland is the Sherlock Holmes Pub, which many Holmes scholars prefer as the more accurate depiction of Holmes’ sitting room on the second floor of the pub. It also features movie posters and other recreations from the books, all while serving food and drink to fans.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle often put places he himself found important from the London streets into books. After his first Holmes story was published, he was invited to dinner by a publisher from Philadelphia who also invited Oscar Wilde to join at the Langham Hotel. This meeting is sited as a turning point for both writers in their successful careers. The hotel still sits on Upper Regent Street and was featured in numerous Holmes stories, including where Holmes meets the King of Bohemia in “A Scandal in Bohemia.” At the time, Doyle was still living in the suburbs and was a recently graduated medical student. He would live in the city so associated with him only briefly.

He moved to Montague Place, not far from the British Museum, and opened up an ophthalmological practice at 2 Upper Wimpole Street in Marylebone, not far from Holmes’ Baker Street. In 1891 he lived at 23 Montague Place before moving back to the suburbs.

You can make your own adventure out of Sherlock Holmes in London, and staying at one of these London apartments in the borough of Mar will make your trip even more memorable.

This one-bedroom vacation rental in Marylebone, London (LN-1228) is a few blocks from 221B Baker Street, allowing you to retrace the steps of Holmes every time you return home. It has modern appliances and furnishing, but with authentic features like moldings and hardwood floors Holmes would have certainly enjoyed.

Nearby the Sherlock Holmes Pub is this one bedroom vacation rental in Westminster, London (LN-815). The building dates from the Victorian Era familiar to Holmes but comes with gadgets like a jacuzzi tub, WiFi, and laundry facilities in the apartment.