The memory palace: how it works, and one to try now

By the Without Notes team. Last checked 27 October 2026.

A memory palace is a place you know well, used to hold a list in order. You give each item one spot along a route through the place, imagine the item doing something there, and later walk the route in your head to collect the items in the same order.

The method is more than 2,000 years old. Despite the name, any place you know will do: your home, the walk to work, or your own body from the feet up. You can try a five-place palace on your body below.

What is a memory palace?

A memory palace is a fixed set of places that you always visit in the same order, with one item on each. You know the places already, so all the learning goes into the items. Each item is joined to its place by a small scene in which the item acts on the place, and that scene is what you find when you come back to the place.

The places also carry the order. If the stamps are on your feet and the dentist is on your knees, the stamps came first, because you reach your feet before your knees. So the method is most useful where order matters: lists, the steps of a procedure, the points of a talk.

In research papers it is called the method of loci, from the Latin loci, “places”. The journey method and the route method are the same technique under other names.

Where does the memory palace come from?

The oldest full description is in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, a Roman handbook for speakers written in the 80s BC. It tells students to choose places in a building they know, keep them in a fixed order, and mark every fifth place with a golden hand so they never lose count.

The story of its invention comes later, in Cicero’s On the Orator. Antonius tells of a banquet in Thessaly: the poet Simonides was called outside, and the hall fell in. No one could tell the dead apart, but Simonides knew where each guest had been sitting. Antonius tells it as a story, and Quintilian, a century later, thought parts of it were invented. The lesson Antonius draws from it, in J. S. Watson’s translation, is that “the order of places would preserve the order of things”.

How to build a memory palace, step by step

1. Choose a place you can walk through in your head without effort. Your body is the quickest to start with: feet, knees, thighs, hips, stomach, chest, shoulders, neck, face, top of head. After that, a walk you take every day, then the rooms of your home.
2. Walk the places once in your head, in order, before you put anything on them. Keep that order every time.
3. Put one item on each place by making it do something there: “The umbrella opens inside your chest.” A few plain words are enough, as long as something happens to the place. You don’t have to see it clearly.
4. Look away and walk the places from memory, saying each item, before you check.
5. Walk it again the next day and a few days after that. A palace you walk once fades like any other memory.

Which places make the best memory palace?

Places you can walk without thinking. In a 2022 study of 221 people, repeated with 147 more, ten parts of the body typed from feet to head worked as well as a classical memory palace for recalling a list in order. In another study, a room that people explored for five minutes worked as well as their own homes, and more of them actually used it. A third found that routes worked better than the inside of a house.

Start on your body, since it needs no setup and goes everywhere with you. Move to a route, and then to rooms, once you need more than ten places.

Do you need to see pictures in your head?

No. In the 2022 study on the body, how vividly people could imagine things made no difference. What counts is that the item acts on the place and that you made up the link yourself. If you think in words, a short sentence will do.

Does the memory palace work?

It helps most with order, and the evidence for it is weaker than its fans suggest. A 2025 review of 85 experiments by Ondřej found that for young adults the measured advantage of the memory palace on its own is small and uncertain.

The habit around it has much stronger support. Recalling something before you look at it again is one of the best-supported ways to learn, across 222 classroom studies, and spreading those recalls over several days works better than packing them into one sitting. A palace gives each recall a fixed order to follow, so start every walk by trying to remember, and look only afterwards.

What is a memory palace good for?

It suits material where the order matters: lists, the steps of a procedure, the points of a talk or a pitch, exam topics, and your answers to the objections you expect. For vocabulary, plain recall in both directions does most of the work, and a scene helps with the words that won’t stay.

It helps less with names (at a real social event, practising recall of names beat a picture trick), with long passages word for word, with skills you perform, and with things you would look up anyway. It holds what you put in it, for as long as you keep walking it, and it won’t improve your memory in general.

Memory palace examples

A list of errands, on your body

Stamps on your feet, the dentist on your knees, a battery on your thighs, candles on your hips, an umbrella on your stomach. Walk from your feet upwards and the errands come back in order.

A five-minute talk, on the walk to work

One key word per point and one point per place: the front door, the gate, the corner shop, the crossing, the station. Learn the opening and closing lines word for word and, in between, only the order of the points.

Exam topics, room by room

One room per chapter and one topic per place in the room. Write the topics out from memory before you open the notes.

Can you use a memory palace online?

Yes. Without Notes is a memory palace that starts on your own body and moves on to routes and places you know. You type ten parts of your body, write a scene for each item yourself, and walk them back from memory. It checks you again at 1, 7 and 30 days, unaided, and shows how many walks each list had. The first lesson is free and needs no account: ten words your way, then ten more on your body at the same pace, with both scores side by side.

Questions

How many places should a memory palace have?

Ten is a good size for a first palace. For longer material, use several palaces in a fixed order, or join two sets of ten and fill them five at a time.

Can the same place hold more than one list?

It can, but two lists on the same places tend to blur. Give each thing you want to keep a place of its own, and use a new set of places for the next list.

Is it the same as a journey or a route?

Yes. A journey is a memory palace laid along a road, and the method works the same way.