Places are chosen, and marked with the utmost possible variety, as a spacious house divided into a number of rooms. Everything of note therein is diligently imprinted on the mind, in order that thought may be able to run through all the parts without let or hindrance. The first task is to secure that there shall be no difficulty in running through these, for that memory must be most firmly fixed which helps another memory. Then what has been written down or thought of, is noted by a sign to remind of it. This sign may be drawn from a whole 'thing', as navigation or warfare, or from some 'word'; for what is slipping from memory is recovered by the admonition of a single 'word'... These signs are then arranged as follows. The first notion is placed, as it were, in the forecourt; the second, let us say in the atrium, the remainder are placed in order all round the impluvium and committed not only to bedrooms and parlours but even to statues and the like. This done, when it is required to revive the memory, one begins from the first place to run through all, demanding what has been entrusted to them of which one will be reminded by the image... What I have spoken of as being done in a house can also be done in public buildings, or on a long journey, or in going through a city with pictures. Or we can imagine such places for ourselves. We require, therefore places, either real or imaginary, and images and simulcra which must be invented. Images are as words by which we note the things we have to learn, so that as Cicero says, 'we use places as wax and images as letters.' Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, XI, ii, 17-22
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A Memory Palace