Memory palace: how to build one, with an example

A memory palace is a way to remember things in order by linking them to places you already know. You picture a familiar place, like your home, walk a fixed route through it in your mind, and leave a vivid image of each item at one stop along the way. To remember the list, you walk the route again and look at what's waiting at each stop.

The technique is also called the method of loci, from the Latin word for places. It's more than 2,000 years old, and it's still what memory champions use. This post covers how to build a memory palace, one example followed from start to finish, what research says about why it works, and what it's not good for.

How to build a memory palace in 5 steps

1. Pick a place you know well. Your home, the apartment you grew up in or your walk to work all work, as long as you can picture it without effort.
2. Plan a route with numbered stops. Walk through the place in your head in the same direction every time and pick distinct spots along the way: the front door, the hallway mirror, the kitchen sink. Start with about 10 stops.
3. Turn each item into a picture. Abstract words are hard to place, so make each item into something you can see. Make it big, strange or funny, because odd images stick better than plain ones.
4. Put one picture at each stop. Make the picture do something with the spot: a fish flapping in the sink is easier to remember than a fish lying next to it.
5. Walk the route back, then review it. Right after you finish, walk the route and name each item. Do it again the next day and a few days later.

Stanford's Center for Teaching and Learning suggests sketching the place and numbering the spots in order before you start. Drawing the route once makes it easier to walk the same way every time.

A memory palace example, start to finish

Say you want to remember the eight planets in order from the sun: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. You pick your apartment and choose eight stops in the order you'd walk through it.

1. Front door: a giant thermometer is stuck to the door, and silver mercury is dripping out of it. (Mercury)
2. Hallway mirror: a marble statue with no arms is looking at herself in the mirror, the Venus de Milo. (Venus)
3. Coat hook: a globe of the Earth is hanging from the hook by a scarf. (Earth)
4. Kitchen counter: a pile of Mars chocolate bars is melting into a red puddle. (Mars)
5. Fridge: when you open the fridge, a jug of juice pours out on its own, juice for Jupiter. (Jupiter)
6. Stove: a ring of smoke circles the stove, like the rings of Saturn. (Saturn)
7. Sofa: someone is sitting on the sofa in a big U-shaped neck pillow, "U" for Uranus. (Uranus)
8. Bathtub: the bathtub is full of seawater, and a trident sticks out of it, the sea god Neptune's. (Neptune)

Now close your eyes and walk in. The door drips mercury, the statue stares into the mirror, the globe swings on the coat hook. Because each planet sits at a numbered stop, you can also say which planet is fifth without counting from the start: it's the juice at the fridge.

The images only have to make sense to you. The trident works if you know Neptune is the Roman god of the sea. If you don't, pick any picture that sounds like the word to you.

Why the memory palace works

People who win memory competitions aren't born with better memories. In a 2003 study in Nature Neuroscience, Eleanor Maguire and colleagues compared 10 people with exceptional memories against 10 people with average ones. The two groups scored about the same on intelligence tests, and their brains looked the same. The difference was the method: nine of the 10 superior memorizers said they used a route through places, the method of loci.

A 2017 study in Neuron by Martin Dresler and colleagues tested whether ordinary people could learn it. The study split 51 people with no memory training into three groups. One group practiced the method of loci for 30 minutes a day for 40 days, one practiced a short-term memory task, and one did no training. Before training, people recalled about 26 of 72 words from a list. After 40 days, the memory palace group recalled about 62, close to the memory athletes in the study. Four months later, without more practice, they still recalled over 22 more words than before training.

The usual explanation is that people are good at remembering places. You can find your way around a house you haven't been in for years. A memory palace hangs new information on that spatial memory, and the route keeps the items in order.

Where the memory palace came from

The story told about its origin comes from Cicero. A Greek poet, Simonides of Ceos, recited a poem at a banquet and stepped outside just before the roof of the hall collapsed. The bodies couldn't be recognized, but Simonides could name each guest by remembering where they had been sitting. That, the story goes, gave him the idea that ordered places could hold memories.

Roman speakers used the method to remember long speeches. A Roman textbook on public speaking from the first century BCE, the Rhetorica ad Herennium, already gives the advice in step 3: striking, unusual images are remembered better than ordinary ones. Writer Lynne Kelly points out in her Psyche guide that cultures without writing used places in a similar way, like the songlines of Aboriginal Australians.

What a memory palace is good for, and what it isn't

A memory palace works best for things you need in a fixed order: the points of a talk, a list of names, the steps of a procedure, or a set of facts you can attach to places, like the countries of the world ordered by population.

It's a weaker fit for understanding. A memory palace can hold "Ebbinghaus, 1885, forgetting curve", but it won't explain why the curve drops fast and then flattens. For ideas you need to understand, explain them in your own words with the Feynman technique, then test yourself with active recall.

A memory palace also fades if you never go back to it. The images that felt unforgettable on day one get blurry within weeks, like everything else on the forgetting curve. Walk the route again a day later, then a week later, then a month later. Spacing your walks out like this is spaced repetition, and it's what keeps the palace standing.

Can you build a memory palace if you can't picture things?

Some people can't see images in their mind at all, which is called aphantasia. Lynne Kelly, who has written several books on memory, suggests focusing on one feature of each location and building a short story around it, instead of trying to see a detailed picture. You can lean on sounds, feelings or what an object is for instead of how it looks. The route still gives the items their order.

Using a memory palace for what you read

A memory palace is a good way to hold the five or six main points of a book or a long article, in order, so you can tell someone about it later. When you finish a chapter, pick the points you want to keep, give each one an image and place them along a short route. If you annotate the book as you read, your margin notes tell you which points to pick.

For the many smaller things you read each week, building a palace each time is too much work. I made Bundle for those. At the end of each article you save, a Quick check asks a few questions about it. You keep the good ones as cards, and Bundle brings each card back with spaced repetition, a little before you'd forget it.

QUICK CHECK · SCIENCE Which night of sleep matters most after you study? The night after. It is at least as important as the night before, because that sleep cements what you learned. Sleep On It: How Snoozing Strengthens MemoriesShow in article

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Questions about the memory palace

What is a mind palace?

A mind palace is the same thing as a memory palace. The name became popular through the TV series Sherlock, where Sherlock Holmes walks through an imagined building to find what he remembers.

What is the 2-7-30 rule for memory?

The 2-7-30 rule is a simple review schedule: go over something new 2 days after you learn it, again after 7 days and again after 30 days. It works well for a memory palace too. Walk the route on those days and fix any stop where the image has faded.

How many memory palaces do you need?

Start with one palace of about 10 stops. Once that works, add more places you know: your workplace, a friend's house, a street you walk often. People who memorize a lot keep a separate palace for each subject, so the images don't get mixed up.

Can you reuse a memory palace?

Yes. Once you no longer need a list, you can place a new one along the same route. The old images fade on their own if you stop walking past them, though a few may linger for a while.