Memory palace examples: 10 ready-made palaces to try

Here are ten ready-made memory palace examples, each with a list and its route through our villa: from a packing list and the planets to a toast at a friend's wedding and the birthdays of your friend group. Click any example and it opens in our free memory palace generator, where you can walk the route, test yourself and change the list.

New to the technique? Read how to build a memory palace, step by step first. In short: you place a vivid image of each item at a fixed spot along a route you know, and walk that route in your mind to recall them. The rules go back to the Rhetorica ad Herennium, around 80 BCE: distinct places, striking images.

How to use these examples

• Read the route. Each item sits at a place in the villa, from the front gate inwards. The generator gives every place a vivid scene.
• Walk it once, slowly. Picture each scene for a few seconds and make it stranger if it feels flat.
• Test yourself. Hide the list and recall the items in order. Then walk it again that evening and the next day.

10 memory palace examples

1. Weekend packing list

A list you need once, quickly, and must not forget anything from. Life, not school.

1. Front gate: Passport
2. Cypress avenue: Phone charger
3. Forecourt fountain: Toothbrush
4. Front door: Swimsuit
5. Entrance hall: Sunglasses
6. Grand staircase: Rain jacket
7. Long corridor: Medication
8. Portrait gallery: A good book

At the front gate, a giant passport is jammed between the bars. In the cypress avenue, phone chargers hang from every tree like lanterns. Pack while you walk the route: if the toothbrush is not at the fountain, it is not in your bag.

Open this palace in the generator

2. The planets in order

The classic first palace for children and adults. Eight items, from the Sun outwards.

1. Front gate: Mercury
2. Cypress avenue: Venus
3. Forecourt fountain: Earth
4. Front door: Mars
5. Entrance hall: Jupiter
6. Grand staircase: Saturn
7. Long corridor: Uranus
8. Portrait gallery: Neptune

Make each planet something you can see: Mercury a thermometer, Venus a mirror, Earth a globe, Mars a red chocolate bar, Saturn a planet with a hula hoop. Jupiter, the largest, sits on the plinth in the entrance hall.

Open this palace in the generator

3. A five-minute speech

Speakers have used the technique for more than two thousand years to talk without notes. One room per part of the speech.

1. Front gate: Opening: the story of the lost keys
2. Cypress avenue: Why we are here today
3. Forecourt fountain: First point: what went well
4. Front door: Second point: what we learned
5. Entrance hall: Third point: what comes next
6. Grand staircase: Thank the people who helped
7. Long corridor: Closing: back to the keys

Replace the items with the points of your own speech. Keep each one short, and let the first and last spots share an image, so the speech closes where it began.

Open this palace in the generator

4. The first ten elements

For chemistry at school, in the order of the periodic table.

1. Front gate: Hydrogen
2. Cypress avenue: Helium
3. Forecourt fountain: Lithium
4. Front door: Beryllium
5. Entrance hall: Boron
6. Grand staircase: Carbon
7. Long corridor: Nitrogen
8. Portrait gallery: Oxygen
9. Library fireplace: Fluorine
10. Reading chair: Neon

Turn abstract names into objects: a fire hydrant for hydrogen, a balloon for helium, a battery for lithium, a bar of coal for carbon, a glowing neon sign for neon under the dome.

Open this palace in the generator

5. A toast at a friend's wedding

Seven beats for a toast you want to give without reading from your phone.

1. Front gate: How we met
2. Cypress avenue: Our first trip together
3. Forecourt fountain: The day they met each other
4. Front door: The habit everyone teases them about
5. Entrance hall: What they bring out in each other
6. Grand staircase: A wish for the two of them
7. Long corridor: Raise your glasses

Fill each beat with one real detail from your friendship, and make it the image: the tent from that first trip filling the front door, their first photo together on the plinth in the hall.

Open this palace in the generator

6. Weekend trip with friends

The plan for a city weekend, in order, so nobody has to scroll through the group chat.

1. Front gate: Meet at the station
2. Cypress avenue: Drop the bags at the flat
3. Forecourt fountain: Lunch at the market
4. Front door: Boat tour on the river
5. Entrance hall: Dinner booked for eight
6. Grand staircase: Concert tickets on the phone
7. Long corridor: Sunday brunch
8. Portrait gallery: Train home

Put your friends in the images: one of them squeezing past a giant train at the front gate, another hanging shopping bags in the cypress trees.

Open this palace in the generator

7. Pancakes for a family Sunday

A recipe is a sequence: ingredients first, then the steps. Handy when the recipe card is at someone else's place.

1. Front gate: Flour
2. Cypress avenue: Eggs
3. Forecourt fountain: Milk
4. Front door: A pinch of salt
5. Entrance hall: Melted butter
6. Grand staircase: Let the batter rest
7. Long corridor: A hot pan
8. Portrait gallery: Flip when bubbles appear

The fountain spouting milk instead of water is hard to forget. For a family recipe, put the person who taught it to you in every scene.

Open this palace in the generator

8. Italian words for a trip

Vocabulary works word by word, with the meaning in the image. Eight words for a trip to Italy with friends.

1. Front gate: il pane: bread
2. Cypress avenue: il formaggio: cheese
3. Forecourt fountain: l'acqua: water
4. Front door: il conto: the bill
5. Entrance hall: grazie: thank you
6. Grand staircase: il treno: the train
7. Long corridor: la spiaggia: the beach
8. Portrait gallery: buonanotte: good night

Link the sound to the meaning: a pane of glass made of bread at the front gate, a cheese shaped like a form you must fill in. Keep one palace per language so the words do not mix.

Open this palace in the generator

9. Birthdays in our friend group

A list in calendar order, so you know who is next. The names and dates here are examples: put in your own.

1. Front gate: Sara: 3 March
2. Cypress avenue: Tom: 17 April
3. Forecourt fountain: Lina: 2 June
4. Front door: Mo: 21 July
5. Entrance hall: Eva: 9 September
6. Grand staircase: Jonas: 30 November

See each friend at their spot, doing something that fits the month: Sara under spring blossom at the gate, Mo with an ice cream at the front door, Jonas in a winter coat in the corridor.

Open this palace in the generator

10. Our camping trip, for the reunion

The stages of a story you want to tell well at a reunion, in the right order, without losing the punchline.

1. Front gate: The tent without poles
2. Cypress avenue: The storm at midnight
3. Forecourt fountain: Shelter in a farmer's barn
4. Front door: Breakfast with the cows
5. Entrance hall: The lost car keys
6. Grand staircase: A lift home on the tractor
7. Long corridor: The photo we all still share

Ask the others to add what you forgot, then share the link with the group, so everyone can walk the same route before the evening.

Open this palace in the generator

Make your own

Any list with an order works: the steps of a procedure at work, the names of people you will meet, the songs for a party, the chapters of a book club evening. Keep it between 5 and 20 items, one item per place, and make the images big, moving and a bit absurd. In a 2017 study in Neuron, people who had never used the technique went from recalling 26 to 62 words out of 72 after 40 days of 30 minutes' practice, so it is worth a few walks.

For exams, see memory palace for studying. For the story behind the term mind palace, see how Sherlock's technique really works.

A palace for what you want to keep

The generator is for lists. For the moments themselves we built The Memory Palace. It is not a memory trainer: you do not memorise anything with it. It is your own 3D palace for your own memories: your photos, recordings and stories each get a room you can walk through. Private by default; you invite family and friends when you choose. The free memory palace generator is a separate tool for the classic technique. The app is made by a small team in Leuven. Have a look at the app.

Sources

• Cicero, De oratore II, 351-354 (the story of Simonides), Latin text at The Latin Library: thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/oratore2.shtml
• Rhetorica ad Herennium, book III, 16 to 24 (rules for places and images), passages at the University of Texas at Austin: laits.utexas.edu/memoria/Ad_Herennium_Passages.html
• Dresler and others, Mnemonic training reshapes brain networks to support superior memory, Neuron 93 (2017): cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(17)30087-9
• Summary of the Dresler study (figures for recall before and after training), ScienceDaily, 8 March 2017: sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170308131236.htm