Build a palace. Never forget again.
The method of loci, also known as the memory palace or mind palace, is the oldest known memory technique: attach each piece of information to a place along a route you know by heart — your own home, for instance — then walk it in your mind to bring the information back. Roman orators used it to deliver hour-long speeches without notes. It still works today, and you can learn it in one evening.
Why a path of rooms beats plain repetition
Spatial memory is ancient
The brain evolved dedicated circuits for remembering places and routes long before written language existed. The method of loci puts a system that already works extremely well to use, instead of fighting your memory over abstract lists.
The order is built in
In a list, the order is one more thing you have to remember. In a route, the order is simply the sequence of rooms: you can't skip from the entrance straight to the garden, so you can't lose your place.
Images stick, words don't
Turning a word into a vivid image — ideally an absurd or moving one — makes it far more memorable than the word on its own. That's the same principle behind every serious memory technique.
How it works, in three steps
Pick a fixed route
A home you know well, with rooms in a consistent order. Knowing the places isn't enough: it helps a lot to be familiar with the order you move through them too. Think of what you do every morning from waking up to leaving the house, your commute from home to the office, or the round you always make between rooms at work. The tool below already has a ready-made palace so you can start right away.
Attach an image to every room
Each thing you want to remember becomes a mental image left in one room of the route, in the order you encounter it.
Walk the palace to recall
When you need the information, walk the same rooms again, in the same order. The images are still waiting for you there.
Ready to build your first palace?
Five minutes of memory training a day is enough to start noticing the difference.
Memory techniques, one at a time
From Sherlock's mind palace to a deck of cards: in-depth articles to go beyond the basics.
- MIND PALACE
Sherlock's mind palace: is it real, and how to build your own
Sherlock Holmes's mind palace is based on a real technique: the method of loci. What's fiction, what's true, and how to build your own mind palace in ten minutes.
- HISTORY
The method of loci: its history, and why it works
From Simonides and the collapsed banquet hall to Cicero, the Renaissance and today's memory champions: the story of the memory palace, and the cognitive science that explains why it works.
- CARDS
How to memorize a deck of cards: the memory athletes' method
Learn to memorize a shuffled deck of 52 cards with a memory palace: give each card an image, walk your route and train with a timer. Step-by-step method.
- PAO SYSTEM
The PAO system: how memory champions memorize numbers and cards
What the PAO system (Person-Action-Object) is, how to build one for the numbers 00–99 and for cards, and how to use it with a memory palace. With examples.
- NUMBERS
How to memorize numbers: the major system explained
The major system turns digits into consonant sounds and numbers into words you can picture. Code table, examples, a 00–99 list and how to use it with a memory palace.
- STUDYING
The memory palace for studying: how to use it for exams
How to use the method of loci to study: what to memorize with a memory palace, how to turn abstract concepts into images, and how to combine it with active recall.
Loci was born after reading Joshua Foer's "Moonwalking with Einstein", out of wanting a tool to practice a little every day. Read the story →