Postcard from Switzerland: the small town where Sherlock Holmes lives on

There is a small town in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland that takes an unusual interest in a famously eccentric British detective.

Wander down the main street of Meiringen (otherwise celebrated mainly for its claim to be where the meringue was invented, around 1600) and you’ll see his name pop up all over the place. In the bakery, there are chocolates imprinted with his image. In the butcher’s shop, you can buy Sherlockerli sausages in his honour; in the dairy, there’s an ice cream emblazoned with his name.

His brand is on a hotel popular with British bikers, and also on its neighbouring cocktail lounge. His image appears on stickers on shop windows, complete with deerstalker and pipe. And that same profile can be seen on the lampshades of the brand new Swisspeak resort, slap-bang in the centre of town.

And then, in the main square, the pièce de résistance: a Sherlock Holmes statue, caped and cogitating, in front of a dedicated museum. Even the square itself is named after him.

At the top, there’s a telescope trained on the ledge where the two men supposedly grappled . . . They take him very seriously here

Yes, in this unlikely corner of Switzerland a man who has never lived, very much lives on.

The connection started back at the end of the 19th century, at a time when the British aristocracy was beginning to discover the joys of both the Swiss mountains and the new sport of skiing. In those early days, Meiringen became a favoured destination for British travellers, and its reputation for clean air attracted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with his wife Louisa, who had been diagnosed with tuberculosis.

While here, the author took the opportunity to visit the dramatic Reichenbach waterfall, a mile or so out of town. At the time, he was looking for a conclusion for his Sherlock Holmes stories; a way of killing off a fictional detective that he was heartily fed up with writing about.

Reichenbach’s spiralling cascade made an excellent device. Holmes and his deadly enemy Moriarty were to grapple by the top of the falls, and then both plunge together to their inevitable deaths. End of series.

Except, of course, Holmes didn’t die. The insatiable appetite of the reading public, and the insistence of his publishers, made sure of that. (In “The Adventure of the Empty House”, Holmes reappeared, explaining to an astounded Watson that he had faked his death to fool Moriarty’s associates.)

Today, a steady stream of Sherlockers — as locals call the diehard enthusiasts — come to Meiringen on a pilgrimage to the location of the story Conan Doyle called “The Final Problem”. Verena Soltermann, who helps to run the vintage funicular that trundles up to the Reichenbach Falls, estimates that up to 50 per cent of her passengers “are here for Sherlock”. Ask nicely, and she’ll even produce a cloak and plus fours for photos, free of charge.

At the top, on the viewing platform beside the falls, there’s a telescope trained on the ledge where the two men supposedly grappled, and a small Sherlock chapel with a wax head and an explanation of how Holmes used a Japanese wrestling technique to survive the fall, before escaping with a local guide. They take him very seriously here.

So seriously, in fact, that regular delegations of international Sherlock societies come for dinners and meetings in town. A celebration of his “not death” takes place in Meiringen every May 4, with flowers around the statue and a special dinner, often with a visitation from the Reichenbach Irregulars, who are the Sherlock society of Switzerland. (Although the Irregulars’ next conference, planned for June 2023, will in fact take place in Leukerbad, near the Gemmi Pass, another location that Conan Doyle included in “The Final Problem”.)

In Meiringen, the ultimate focus of Sherlock tourism is the Sherlock Holmes Museum, housed in the former British church on the main square. Here, the image of Benedict Cumberbatch, who played the cerebral detective in a recent BBC television series, is the frontispiece to an exhibition that contains some of the Holmes’s most famous sayings (“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”). Its eccentric collection of objects runs from Dr Watson’s rugby shirt to a housebreaker’s knife for removing the putty from windows.

The church crypt has been replaced by a careful recreation of the living room at 221b Baker Street, based on illustrations from the Strand magazine, in which the Sherlock Holmes stories were first serialised. Here, there’s all the trappings of Holmes’s presence: a discarded violin, a copy of the Times on the floor, a microscope on the desk and mementoes from Dr Watson’s experiences in the Afghan War on the walls.

There’s a modest entrance fee, and at the museum’s reception desk, Regina Rohrbach makes regular sales of authentic deerstalker hats, at CHF45 apiece. When I ask Simon Zobrist, Meiringen’s tourism director, how much Sherlock contributes to the local visitor economy, he estimates it at up to 10 per cent, and increasing.

So these days, every time a new Sherlock series or a new film is released, a small town in Switzerland allows itself a little smile.

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