How to Build a Memory Palace

What if I told you that memory involves craftsmanship just as much as sculpting, painting, film making, or writing poetry? There once was a time when the art of memory was seriously studied and carefully passed on to others. Today, I would like specifically draw your attention to the memory palace, a technique that can be traced back to indigenous cultures and ancient Greece. It has been used by influential writers such as Cicero, St. Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Hugh of St. Victor, Dante Alighieri, C.S Lewis, Jordan Peterson, and more.

In this series of mnemonics, I would like to explain how to build, use, and design memory palaces from a beginner to an advanced level. I will also be providing homework assignments at the end of each post. If you are consistent and put into practice the principles taught in this series, you should be able to confidently memorize texts, speeches, poetry, quotations, and more like the rhetoricians of old according to the classical tradition.

But, before we begin, I would like to define some key terms that are helpful for understanding texts on mnemonics.

Key Terms

• Locus / Loci: These are terms that you will often find in books on mnemonics and art of memory forums, so these are important to know and understand. Locus is the Latin word for “location”, and loci is its plural form. Memory palaces are comprised of loci by which one may store information. Doors, couches, televisions, trees, sinks, and so on may be used as loci, even parts of the human body or objects within virtual reality or imagined places.

• Imagery / Images: It has once been said as one uses ink to write on paper, one uses images to write on memory. Images in the context of mnemonics refers to the visual representation of a thing in one’s mind. If I were to say the word, dog. You would not see the letters, D, O and G in your mind, but an image of one.

• Encoding: The act of converting abstract information into a concrete image. For example, “justice” is an abstract word. I cannot see justice with my mental eye, I cannot hold it in my hand or squeeze justice like a tennis ball. But, I can use an image to represent justice, perhaps justice can be a “scale” or a “judge’s mallet.” I can imagine myself holding a mallet and feeling its texture, it is something concrete. This act of converting justice into a judge’s mallet is known as encoding.

What is a Memory Palace?

A memory palace may be defined as any familiar place that is imagined in one’s mind for the purpose of memorizing, storing, and retrieving information. It can be a place outdoors such as a park, indoors such as your house or a classroom, or even a virtual place such as the landscape of a video game. Different terms have been used to describe a memory palace, sometimes you will hear terms such as method of loci, roman room, the journey method, or mind palace. The most commonly used terms in mnemonics are “method of loci” and “memory palace.”

You can store information on these locations within your memory palace that is imagined in your mind. So, when you need to recall something, you can mentally move from one location to another. We have the ability to close our eyes and to imagine ourselves being somewhere else. For this reason, when delivering speeches we often say things like “in the first place” or “my first point.” This was originally intended to be an instruction for audience members to store a given point of a speech in one’s memory palace. We even find this concept of place in words like “topic” or “topography” which derives from the Greek topos, meaning “place.”

You may be saying, “This storing images in your mind thing sounds strange!” Or you may be asking, “Well, how do I exactly store information in a memory palace?” I will dedicate an entire post to this soon, but for now I would like to focus on the principles of building. As with the construction of physical buildings, we need to consider our memorization needs.

The legendary Johannes Mallow, 2x world memory champion, and inventor of the 2-card block system.

When to Use a Memory Palace?

The first question I like to ask myself: “Should I use a memory palace or is another mnemonic device more fitting?” One mistake we can tend to make is using a memory palace for everything. Sometimes the link method, spaced-repetition, acronyms, rote memorization, natural memory, etc., are fine. However, if you desire to memorize long lists such as the presidents of the United States, countries and capitals, or Pulitzer prize winners and their book titles then the memory palace can be useful. Or if order matters to you such as delivering a speech without referring to notes or having the ability to recite a long poem forwards and backwards, or any verse at random upon command. Or if you want to be able to confidently share the history of art, philosophy, theology, etc., while including exact dates and names of hard to remember historical figures.

Determine the Scope

Once you have determined if the memory palace is the right technique to use, you should then consider the scope of memorization. For example, if you are memorizing a text with 20 lines, you would want to choose a memory palace that contains at least 20 locations. And by locations, I mean a place that contains 20 medium to large sized objects such as a chairs, couches, refrigerators, benches, doors, etc. Try to choose a memory palace that is proportionate to that which you trying to memorize. If you want to remember a text that consists of 100 lines, you would not want to choose a small closet as your memory palace because you would need more space considering the amount that need to be memorized. A better option is to use four memory palaces containing 25 locations each and to link them together in order to store 100 lines. I will explain the concept of palace-linking later in this series.

Lance Tschirhart, one of my favorite mnemonists and thinkers on image-linking and Major System phonetics.

Intuitive Directionality

When choosing loci and numbering them in a memory palace, make sure that it has an intuitive direction, that is, there should be a natural movement when you move from one location to the next. In order to do this, try to imagine that you are giving someone a tour. Ask yourself, “where would I naturally start, progress, and come to an end?” Avoid using zig-zags when mapping out locations, but use a circular clock-wise or counter-clock wise movement or a straight line if it is a one directional path.

It is important to choose a natural movement because when you are recalling information with a memory palace you are moving from one locus to another in your mind. If there is an unnatural movement there is a tendency to become confused, to forget a locus, or to even skip over one. This is especially important if you are memorizing texts in which order matters such as poetry or points in a speech. You do not want to skip over a line.

Here is the structure of one of Vanni De Luca’s memory palaces, an Italian mnemonist who memorized the majority of the Inferno by Dante. Notice how he arranges the loci and moves from 1-5, 6-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, and 26-30 in a clockwise direction. There is also a natural movement in how he walks from room to room during recall. He has a circular movement from A to F, and does move in zig-zags such as A, E, D, B, F, to C. I must clarify, if you are using an indoor path or an outdoor area as an memory palace that does not allow for this type of circularity, using a line-like movement is perfectly fine.

Proper Spacing and Object-Size

Do not choose loci that are too close to each other. They should be about an arm-lengths apart. So, you wouldn’t want to use a desk and have the cup holder as locus 1, the desktop computer as locus 2, the mouse as locus 3, the keyboard as locus 4, and so on. A problem that may occur with close spacing is that when you are recalling you can accidentally skip over a locus. It is recommended to use medium to large-sized objects. Items that you are able to immediately recognize with your mental eye without much effort in identifying.

C.S Lewis was known for his remarkable memory and studied ancient and medieval memory arts. He often quoted large passages of poetry to his students.

Use Variation and Distinguishable Loci

Avoid using the same type of object twice in a section of your memory palace. If room one has two couches, then only use one couch for a locus. If room two has two desks, then only use one desk as a locus. But, let’s say room one has a couch and room two also has a couch, you can still use a couch in room two. The main point is not to use a locus-type twice or more in the same room, if they are in different rooms, it is fine.

Avoid using rooms that are bland with a lack of distinction and variety. If you are using an office building, avoid using repetitive and uniform cubicles as loci. Perhaps, the only exception would be if you are able to associate that cubical with a specific co-worker or if it is decorated in such a way that you are able to clearly distinguish it from others.

Numbering Loci for Retrieval

I recommend using around 5 loci in each room and not much more in order to avoid overcrowding. Of course, this depends on the size of your memory palace. But, if you are following the principles of using medium-large sized objects, adequate spacing, and uniform distribution of loci as mentioned above, then you will naturally have around 5 loci in each room.

Andrea Muzii, current world memory champion, and influential art of memory teacher

Andrea Muzii, world memory champion once stated,

“The number of loci to choose for each room ultimately depends on its dimension, but on average 3-5 loci is just about right.”

The proper numbering of loci in each room is also important because it allows for quicker access to information during recall. If someone asked you, “what is the 76th line of Paradise by John Milton?” Instead of counting from 1 and working your way up to 76, you can immediately go to locus 75 and step ahead by one in order to arrive at the 76th point. Some have combined a peg system with the memory palace technique in order to be able to access any point without the need for mental calculation.

Conclusion

You may be asking, “Why am I spending so much time going into details about spacing and arrangement of loci?” This may seem small and insignificant, but forgetting while using the memory palace technique is often attributed to poor design and not necessarily encoding. How you choose to structure your memory palaces impacts your process of memorization, just as poor traffic engineering can impact our driving experience.

In conclusion, (1) determine the scope and memory palace dimensions, (2) include intuitive directionality, (3) use proper size and spacing, (4) choose varied and distinguishable loci, and (5) determine how loci should be numbered and distributed throughout your memory palace(s).

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Homework Assignment:

• Try to list out all the places you have ever visited or lived at in your entire life. School, workplaces, restaurants, parks, airports, hotels, friends and family houses, parks, churches, doctor offices, grocery stores, hiking trails, etc. Go as far back as you can possibly remember, even if you are unable to reconstruct if perfectly in your mind. Try to list out at least 50 places, just their names.

This is the only assignment for now. As the course continues, I will include more assignments, exercises, and recommended reading or listening. I would love to hear about your progress, you are more than welcomed to tag me on Substack Notes with a picture of your list of 50 or more places or you can leave a comment below.

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Examples of the Memory Palace Technique in Use

1. Enkhshur and Munkhshur: Memorizing the Sequence of Flowers in 5 mins (select the gear icon to turn on the auto-translate feature)

2. Jon von Essen: Memorized 100,000 Digits of Pi (Unofficial World Record)

3. Csengo Balint Memorizes 30 Images in 7.9 seconds

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Thanks for reading!

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Personal Update: This week I got a personal best in the Words Discipline. I memorized 43 random words in 60 seconds.

I will explain how to use memory training software in future posts. This type of training is not necessary for using the memory palace technique but it is helpful for working on certain skills such as encoding and learning to trust in your intuition.