Choosing and marking out your first palace

The origin

Around 500 BC, the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos left a banquet moments before the hall collapsed. The bodies were unrecognisable. Simonides identified every victim by remembering where each had been sitting. He had just discovered that spatial memory can serve as a filing system.

Cicero taught it to Roman orators. World champions use it today under the name method of loci. It is, to this day, the most powerful memory technique ever documented.

Choosing the right place

A good palace has four properties.

1. You know it by heart. You can walk it with your eyes closed.
2. It has a natural route. A front door, an obvious direction of travel, a way out.
3. It is varied. Different rooms, volumes and colours.
4. It is emotionally neutral or positive. Avoid places tied to a painful memory: the emotion interferes with encoding.