Short answer: A memory palace, or method of loci, is a technique for remembering items by turning each into a vivid image and placing it at a spot along a route you know well, such as your home. To recall, you walk the route in your mind. Memory athletes use it to set records, including 4,620 digits memorized in one hour, and a 2017 study found that novices who trained 30 minutes a day for 40 days more than doubled their word recall.
At a glance
| Also called | Method of loci; route method |
|---|---|
| Traditional origin | Simonides of Ceos, as told by Cicero in De Oratore (55 BCE) |
| Oldest manual | Rhetorica ad Herennium, about 90 BCE |
| Key brain study | Maguire et al., Nature Neuroscience, 2003 |
| Key training study | Dresler et al., Neuron, 2017 |
| Digits in one hour (record) | 4,620, Ryu Song I, World Memory Championships, Wuhan, December 2019 (Guinness) |
| Raises IQ? | No evidence that it does |
How a memory palace works
The method rests on a plain fact about human memory: people remember places and pictures far better than lists of abstract words. A memory palace converts the second into the first.
- Choose a place you know cold. Your home, your street, your route to work.
- Fix a route and its stops. Walk it in the same order every time: front door, hall mirror, kitchen sink, and so on. Each stop is a locus, Latin for "place."
- Turn each item into an image. Make it concrete, exaggerated, ideally absurd or in motion.
- Place one image at each stop. Make the image interact with the spot: it breaks, burns, floods or sings there.
- Walk the route to recall. The places return in order, and the images come with them.
Order is free. Because the route has a sequence, the list does too, which is why the method excels at speeches, decks of cards and long strings of digits. For numbers, competitors first learn a fixed code that turns digits into people, objects or actions, then place those images along the route.
A worked example: seven problems in seven rooms
Try it on the seven Millennium Prize Problems, a list most people forget within minutes.
| Stop | Item | Image placed there |
|---|---|---|
| Front door | Riemann hypothesis | A ream of paper stamped with zeros jams the door shut |
| Hall mirror | P versus NP | A giant pea stares back at you and refuses to show its reflection |
| Kitchen sink | Navier-Stokes | The navy sails a battleship through a swirling, overflowing sink |
| Refrigerator | Yang-Mills | A yin-yang symbol spins inside a flour mill on the top shelf |
| Sofa | Hodge conjecture | A hedgehog sits on the cushion, holding a sign marked with a question mark |
| Bookshelf | Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer | A birch tree grows through the books while a swimmer dives from the top shelf |
| Bed | Poincaré conjecture | A loop of rope shrinks to a point on the pillow, already solved |
Walk the apartment twice in your head. Then close this page and name the seven.
Where it comes from: Simonides and the fallen hall
The founding story belongs to Simonides of Ceos, a Greek lyric poet of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. Called outside during a banquet, he escaped when the hall collapsed behind him. The bodies were crushed beyond recognition, but Simonides could identify them by recalling where each guest had been sitting. From that, the story goes, he drew the principle that orderly places preserve memory.
The story is a legend, and the source that carried it is Roman. Cicero told it in De Oratore in 55 BCE, and Quintilian repeated it in his Institutio Oratoria around 95 CE. The fullest ancient manual is older: the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium, written about 90 BCE, describes how to choose backgrounds and images in detail. For Roman orators, who were expected to speak at length without notes, it was part of rhetorical training.
What brain scans and training studies show
The modern evidence comes from two studies that measured the method directly.
| Study | Who was tested | Main finding |
|---|---|---|
| Maguire, Valentine, Wilding and Kapur, Nature Neuroscience, 2003 | 10 superior memorizers, eight of them top finishers at the World Memory Championships, and 10 matched controls | No structural brain differences and no exceptional intellect; nine of the ten used the method of loci, and their brains engaged regions tied to spatial memory and navigation, including the hippocampus |
| Dresler and colleagues, Neuron, 2017 | 23 athletes from the top 50 of the memory-sports ranking; 51 novices in a training trial | Novices who practiced 30 minutes a day for 40 days went from about 26 to 62 words recalled out of 72; gains held at four months; brain connectivity shifted toward the athletes' pattern |
Maguire's conclusion is blunt: superior memory "was not driven by exceptional intellectual ability or structural brain differences." The champions had trained a strategy. Dresler's trial showed the strategy transfers to beginners. Control groups that practiced a working-memory task or did nothing improved far less, by about 11 and 7 words. "After training we see massively increased performance on memory tests," Dresler said when the study appeared.
At 20 minutes, the athletes in that study recalled 70.8 of 72 words on average. Matched controls managed 39.9.
The records: digits, cards and champions
Memory sports turned the old rhetorical trick into a competition. Guinness World Records lists 4,620 digits memorized in one hour by Ryu Song I of North Korea, set at the 2019 World Memory Championships in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. Competitors at that level encode digits into images and lay them along memorized routes at high speed.
The sport's best-known names built their careers on the method. Dominic O'Brien of Britain won the World Memory Championship eight times. Joshua Foer, a journalist, took up the technique while reporting on the sport and won the 2006 U.S. Memory Championship. None of these competitors claims a photographic memory. They describe learned systems, which is the subject of our guide Is photographic memory real?
Does a memory palace make you smarter?
It makes you better at memorizing. No study has shown that it raises IQ. Maguire's champions matched their controls on verbal IQ and reasoning even though they far outperformed them on memory tasks. Dresler's trial measured word-list recall, not general intelligence.
The distinction matters because IQ tests include memory tasks. The Wechsler scales, for example, contain a working-memory index; see our WAIS-IV guide. A trained strategy can lift one narrow task, but a full-scale score such as 130 rests on many subtests, from vocabulary to visual puzzles. For an honest review of what does move scores, read how to increase IQ. Our free IQ test is a practice screener, and the IQ guides explain clinical testing.
Where the method falls short
- It needs encoding time. Turning abstract material into images takes effort, and the payoff is largest for ordered lists, names, numbers and speeches.
- It stores facts, not understanding. A palace can hold the order of the seven Millennium problems. It cannot explain the Hodge conjecture.
- Practice builds it. Dresler's novices needed 40 days of daily drills to reach 62 words, still short of the athletes' 70.8.
- Routes need care. Loading a new list onto a route still crowded with the last one invites confusion; keep separate routes for separate material.
Used for what it does well, it is among the oldest memory techniques on record and one of the few with brain-imaging evidence behind it.
Frequently asked questions
What is a memory palace?
A memory palace is a mental map of a familiar place, such as your home, used to store information. You turn each item into a vivid image and place it at a fixed stop along a route. Walking the route in your mind brings the images back in order. The technique is also called the method of loci.
Does the memory palace technique really work?
Yes, for memorizing. In a 2017 study in Neuron, novices who trained 30 minutes a day for 40 days went from about 26 to 62 words recalled out of 72, and the gains lasted at least four months. Nine of the ten superior memorizers studied by Maguire and colleagues in 2003 used the method.
Who invented the memory palace?
Tradition credits the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos, who is said to have identified the victims of a collapsed banquet hall by recalling where each had sat. The story survives through Cicero's De Oratore of 55 BCE. The oldest detailed instructions appear in the Rhetorica ad Herennium, written about 90 BCE.
How many digits can memory champions memorize?
Guinness World Records lists 4,620 decimal digits memorized in one hour by Ryu Song I of North Korea at the 2019 World Memory Championships in Wuhan, China. Competitors at that level convert digits into images with a fixed code and place them along memorized routes.
Can a memory palace raise your IQ?
There is no evidence that it does. Studies show large gains in the trained memory task, not in general intelligence. Superior memorizers in a 2003 Nature Neuroscience study matched ordinary controls on verbal IQ and reasoning.
Sources
- Routes to remembering: the brains behind superior memory (Maguire et al., Nature Neuroscience, 2003) — Ten superior memorizers (eight from the World Memory Championships) and ten controls; nine used the method of loci; no structural or intellectual explanation
- A Look at Some Memorable Brains (Relias Media) — Summary of Maguire 2003: verbal IQ and reasoning similar to controls; hippocampal and parietal activation
- Mnemonic Training Reshapes Brain Networks to Support Superior Memory (Dresler et al., Neuron, 2017) — 23 athletes from the top 50; 51 novices; 30 minutes a day for 40 days; recall 70.8 vs 39.9 of 72; effects at four months
- Memory Brain Hack: Super Sized Memory is Trainable and Long Lasting (Neuroscience News, 2017) — Recall from about 26 to 62 of 72 words; control gains of 11 and 7 words; Dresler quote
- Most decimal digits memorized in one hour (Guinness World Records) — 4,620 digits, Ryu Song I, Wuhan, December 2019
- Method of loci (Wikipedia) — Simonides story via Cicero (55 BCE) and Quintilian; Rhetorica ad Herennium; O'Brien and Foer
Editorial standard: IQ figures for historical figures are retrospective estimates and are labeled as such; scores for living people appear only when the person disclosed them or a reputable outlet reported them. Corrections: contact the editors.