Meiringen

In 1893, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stayed at the Park Hotel du Sauvage in Meiringen and, upon seeing the 250-metre Reichenbach Falls, decided it was the perfect stage for Holmes's death. In 'The Final Problem' (December 1893), Holmes and Professor Moriarty struggle at the edge of the falls on 4 May 1891. In 1988, sculptor John Doubleday created a bronze statue of Holmes with 60 sculpted mystery clues referencing different stories. The Sherlock Holmes Museum in the English Church basement opened in 1991.

The Aare Gorge is the legendary home of the Tatzelwurm, an Alpine cryptid described as a half-dragon with a snake-like body and clawed forelegs. According to folklore, a chicken lays a black egg in water, which sunlight incubates into a Tatzelwurm; when it crawls through sand, the sand turns to glass. In 1935, a photograph published in the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung claimed to show the creature; the newspaper offered 1,000 Reichsmarks for its capture. The Tatzelwurm remains the official mascot of the gorge.

According to documents once held by the Museum of Culinary Art in Frankfurt (destroyed in WWII), the meringue was first created by a confectioner named Gasparini working in Meiringen around 1600. He named his creation after the town. The dessert spread across Europe: King Stanislaus Leszczynski tasted meringues in Nancy and sent the recipe to his daughter Maria, wife of King Louis XV, spreading it to Versailles. In 1985, Meiringen achieved the record for the world's longest meringue. The Frankfurt documents' destruction means definitive proof no longer exists.

The Aareschlucht (Aare Gorge) is 1.4 kilometres long, bordered by cliffs up to 200 metres high, and varies from 30 metres at its widest to barely 1 metre at its narrowest. The gorge was carved 10,000 years ago by meltwater at the end of the last Ice Age. The Kirchet limestone ridge dates from the Cretaceous Period (130-60 million years ago). Researcher Franz Müller identified five earlier gorges in addition to today's, each formed during an interglacial period. The gorge has been open to the public since 1889.

Meiringen sits at the junction of five Alpine passes: Grimsel (2,164 m), Susten (2,224 m), Brünig (1,008 m), Grosse Scheidegg (1,962 m), and Joch Pass (2,207 m). For centuries, Säumer (muleteers) drove pack animals carrying cheese, leather, and iron goods northward, and wine, rice, and Murano glass southward. A 1397 trade document between Bern and Valais regulated the Grimsel route from Lucerne to Milan: trail upkeep, tolls, and hospice operations.

On 18 November 1946, a US military C-53 Skytrooper crash-landed on the Gauli Glacier at 3,350 metres, carrying 12 people including two officers, four women, and an 11-year-old girl. On 23 November, two Swiss soldiers on skis reached the crash site after a 13-hour ascent from Innertkirchen. Swiss pilots then landed Fieseler Storch aircraft with skis directly on the glacier — one of the first successful mountain air rescues in history. The event, coordinated from Meiringen Air Base, is considered the birth of Swiss air rescue and led to the founding of Rega in 1952.

In 1988, sculptor John Doubleday created a life-size bronze statue of Sherlock Holmes, unveiled in the presence of Dame Jean Conan Doyle. It stands at Conan Doyle Place, depicting Holmes in his deerstalker cap moments before his confrontation with Moriarty. Embedded in the statue are 60 sculpted mystery clues, each referencing a different story. In 'The Adventure of the Empty House' (1903), Holmes reveals he survived using baritsu to throw Moriarty into the abyss, then went into hiding.

The first village church was built in the 9th or 10th century and later destroyed in a flood. The replacement Church of St. Michael was built approximately 5 metres above the old church to protect against future flooding. During renovations in 1915-16, excavators discovered the remains of three predecessor churches buried five metres below the current floor — archaeological finds of national importance documenting over 1,000 years of continuous worship in the Hasli valley.