PORT500 Memory Palace - How To Create An Easy 500 Locations Palace!

Erol · June 30, 2019, 11:06am

PORT500 is an easy method to create your own 500 locations memory palace using your existing 00-99 Persons.

I’ve come up with this idea a few years ago for creating a memory palace to memorise my 00-99 Persons using the Dominic System.

This palace can be used to memorise any kind of data, such as;
numbers, cards, binary, words, lists, passwords, speeches and any other information that you need a memory palace for.

Let’s just dive into how this works.

What is PORT500?

P = Person
O = Objects as RT = Recall Triggers
500 = Total of locations.

Let’s recap;
Person with his own Objects used as the Recall Triggers totalling 500 Locations.

So this is how I come up with the title of it to make it easy to remember.

What is a Recall Trigger?
It’s the object itself on a location that triggers the action of what you had memorised, It’s also a path to follow in your memory journey with no confusion.

When I want to recall the data I had memorised, I have to first visit the location, and on that location I have the object that will Trigger the action/s I had memorised.
Some people call it a locus, pegs, stops, and stations. I call it the Recall Triggers as the object itself on that location triggers the brain to remind you of the action.

How does this PORT500 Memory palace work?
The basic idea is to create a “Sentence” involving the Person that has Four Objects to be used as Recall Triggers in his/her room. Totalling a Five-Stop journey path in each room for each person.

How to structure PORT500 Memory palace.

You’ll need your existing 100 Persons from 00-99.
You’ll have an imaginary 100 Rooms for each person.
You’ll need to come up with 100 sentences belonging to each person.
You’ll need to come up with Four Objects involving the Person.

Now imagine, there are 100 doors next to each other, each of which has a Face image of the Person starting from 00-99 as Stickers on the face of the doors.

So your first Door would have the image sticker of the Person that represents 00.
Let’s say that this Person as 00 was Olive Oyl.

Now as you open the door, you stand at the door entry, and you see;
Olive Oyl but this time in Full View,
She is Cooking Spinach for Popeye The Sailor.

There you have it.
This gives you Five locations on your first room.
We have a Sentence that represents five recall triggers.

“Olive Oyl is Cooking Spinach for Popeye The Sailor”

Now let’s see what the objects are;
Person | Cooking Pot | Spinach | Popeye | Sailor Anchor

So if you were to memorise 20 digits number for example, you’d use Olive Oyl with the first 4 digits, Cooking Pot with the next 4 digits and so on.

Here is how the first room look like for PORT 00;

Now the next room is PORT 01;
in my case it’s a Person who is a caricature artist Oguz Aral that represents the 01 person.

Here is the Sentence I use;
Oguz Aral is Drawing on Paper the Comic (Avni) who has a Candle on his head.
So I have the Person | A Pencil | Paper | Comic boy | Candle

And here is how my PORT 01 room look like;

It may take you a while to come up with the Sentence that involves 4 objects, however, I usually use the person’s job that makes sense with what s/he does to come up with the objects.

For example, 40 = Dominic O’Brien. I see him memorising stuff, so my 40 is;
Dominic is Memorising Numbers on the Stage being filmed.
So I’d have Dominic | Brain | Number-Shape | Writing Board | Film-Camera.
With a little practice it doesn’t take long to memorise it because it makes sense to what he does.

So there you have it, you’d have to repeat this process with each of your existing person from 00-99 totalling 100 rooms with a total of 500 locations.

How about the Background in the rooms?
I personally use a white background in a rectangular outlined room. I see the person and all 4 objects very clearly as a whole. So the path is from left to right, and I don’t zoom in or out, I just see the actions in all 5 locations as a whole.

However, you may use a background environment that may belong to your Person if it’s any easier for you. And just find the images of the objects and place them into the room, either in your mind, or as how I do it with real images/pictures next to each other from left to right, and save it as a whole image.
I would suggest you spend some time to create the actual room with the Person and four objects as seen on my samples, and save each of them as a Jpeg Image, and practice by using your computer or laptop to scroll thru the images. If you save the images as 00 for your first one, and then 01 and so on until 99, your pc will show them in the order of the numbered images.

Position of the data to recall.
The good thing about this palace is that, once you memorise a piece of data, you’ll be able to recall the position of it as well.

One Other Way To Create This Palace.
If you feel that this may be confusing you because you use the same persons for both your palace and for your PA or PAO, then I suggest you create a separate Persons List from 00-99.

Each person is different. Each have different jobs. Each have their own hairstyle, eyebrows and eyes, nose, chin and other facial muscles. Also, each person has their own distinguishing clothing style, shirts, jumpers, trousers, skirts, dresses, shoes and other accessories. So it’s always easy to separate one person from the other. You just need to really get to know that person and have at least one single image of him or her standing.

Extending it 1000 locations - PORT1000.
How about PORT1000 With 1000 Locations using 100 Persons?
If 500 locations are not enough for you, then you can extend this to 1000 locations using your existing 100 Persons.

Again, use each of your person for each room.
Use all the Major system (or whatever system you use) objects in each room and make it belong to that Person.

Let’s again start with Olive Oyl.
You’d have the Person’s face on the door as the sticker, and inside the room you’d have 10 objects that are in line next to each other that belongs to that room and the person.

So Olive Oyl (Or whoever your person is that represent 00 for you) would have;
Using the Major System in this case;

So those items would personally belong to Olive Oyl in that room.

in PORT 02,
starting with 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19. So all the object would personally belong to that person in that room.

And so on with the other rooms until 99th person.
You can practice the path by involving the person for each room to memorise the whole room, and so on with all the other rooms.

I personally don’t use 1000 locations, however, it may come handy for you if you have a good enough reason and the time to invest into it.

I use PORT500 with the shaper system from 00-99 to memorise stuff using the palace. So If I was to memorise a 20 digit number in 4 digit chunks, I’d be in the PORT00 which is the room for Olive Oyl, and use my number shapes to memorise the data and involve olive oyl and the rest of her objects for the actions.

I hope the PORT500 will come handy for some of you and will Trigger other ideas to create your own memory palaces.

I’d love to hear your ideas about this, and perhaps improve it even further with creative ideas to make it even easier to use it. What’s your thoughts?

elitely · June 30, 2019, 1:04pm

Thank you…Saved your article in my computer disk for future use.

velon · August 23, 2020, 3:18pm

I think this is brilliant! Do you find this system works best with any one discipline, say, numbers, words ect…? It looks like it would work as well as any other memory palace. But your recommendation would be appreciated. Thanks for sharing.

Erol · August 23, 2020, 4:48pm

Thank you!

The images that belongs to each person are the pegs that can be used to memorise any kind of data, be it a words-list, binary, number digits, images, cards, other… (and even Names if they match your persons)

You would just need to add a link-action between the current peg and the data you want to memorise.

It’s similar to the Grid system, except it has persons and their own objects with each 5 grid line.

This type of palace would be best to use for long term memory.
Each person gives you 5 locations, this would also mean that you can recall the order position of any data because each person would have different objects.

As an example;
if you were to memorise the presidents in the correct order, you’d need 4 rooms, you’d link each president to each item in each room.

And if I was to ask you who the 18th president is; you’d know immediately that it would have to be in the 4th room, linked with the 3rd object.

Another good thing would be to add more data to it if you had the need for it.
So if it was the presidents, you’d first memorise them using this palace, and then if you wanted to add more information, using the chain-link method you can add more data to each president as long as the data is to do with that president and no other subject. You can of course use different subjects with different rooms. So it can also expand to your liking.

QiJitsu · August 23, 2020, 5:27pm

Very nice, Erol. I was also going to say that this is similar to a grid system. I’ve been reading about medieval grid systems lately.

Question: since every door always has the same image pegs, can you get confused when using them for different subjects?

velon · August 23, 2020, 5:51pm

Thank you, very much. I’ve just learned my PAO system and I’m in the process of practicing in Memory League and other apps to increase my speed. Some of my crazy goals include memorizing the item numbers and prices of merchandise we sell at my job, scripture, political, historical, and current events. All long term projects. I need large palaces.
Although I have about 20 or so palaces this one will be the most impressive because of the ease in sequencing the information as you pointed out with the presidents. I know the link method isn’t new but I’ve rarely used it to add relevant information. Also I think I can overlay this method, somehow, onto my other palaces.
Anyway, I’m gonna start building my first 500 loci palace this week. Thanks again.

Erol · August 24, 2020, 12:11am

You wouldn’t get confused if each subject was different than the other.
Each door would have a different person from 00-99. You would have to make a mental note of how many rooms you’ve used for each subject.
With spaced repetition you’d go over it every so often so it would be programmed into your long term memory.

You can use the first 5 rooms for 25 presidents
And then use the next 5 rooms for the countries of Europe.
and so on.

If and when you want to add more data to an existing president, or to a country etc, you’d then use pair-link and chain-link methods to your existing story.

A Method Of An Expanding Place
This is something I wanted to write about in a lot more details, but here is a quick example of how you can also expand this palace, or your palace/s.

You could in fact use a single room for 25 presidents.
And use the next room for the next 25 items for another subject, and so on.

You do this by Pair & Chain-Linking.
Let me give you an example;

Let’s say we want to memorise the countries of Europe;

Here are 5 countries to memorise as an example;
to use with the first peg which would be your person first.

Bulgaria
Iceland
Belgium
France
Germany

Let’s say it’s your first room,
and your first person was Superman as the first peg.

Let’s now associate an image for each country.

Bulgaria - Bull
Iceland - Ice-Cube
Belgium - Bell
France - Eiffel Tower
Germany - Mercedes

You then Pair-Link, and then Chain-Link to create your story for the first 5 items using a single peg to make a start.

On the first room, open the door and you see Superman (First grid, first peg);

Superman Riding a Bull
Bull is headbutting a huge Ice-Cube
Ice-Cubes hits the Bell
Bell is hanging on the Eiffel Tower
Eiffel Tower falls down on a Mercedes.

In your imagination, you’d zoom-in to the area, use your 5 senses, use some emotions, and create your story mentally.

Let’s now go a little further with the Grid;
and think where in the world you’d find the first peg.

So your first peg is Superman, and you can imagine this story happening at the location where you would find Superman. The famous scene might be outside the phonebox where he changes from Clark-Kent into Superhero.

So this story of you memorising 5 countries would take place outside of the phone booth. The phone booth becomes the permanent location of your First Grid with your first peg Superman.

If the next peg item was let’s say a “Pen”, think of where you you’d find that type of pen. Let’s say you’d find it in a Classroom. That would be the location for the next 5 items chain-linked into a story on the second grid.

This would then give you an expanding palace. You can add more related items to an existing story such as dates, persons, numbers, and anything else that is related to the same subjects.

You can in fact expand this even further, but I’ll leave it at this level for now as it may already be a little confusing.

I’ll be away for a few weeks from the forum. I’ll probably type up further details about this method when I’m back.

Hope this helps.

Rajadodve786 · August 24, 2020, 8:35am

I mainly see a shape in a country and associates a word (country name) with that

And then link with shaper country to
Other countries.

Let’s say France is the main country because it looks like dress.

Eiffel Tower

Belgium - bell (at the top of tower a big bell is ringing.)

Luxembourg - Lux soap (in the middle of tower some people cleaning the eiffel tower with lux soap and it’s also looks like soap)

Germany - germs (now cleaned)

Switzerland and italy - sweets on boot (below the eiffel tower many sweets are present in boots)

*Spain - pen (pen in the left side of boots).

These are the neighborhood countries of France.

I i wanna add more countries .
Let’s suppose i am there (in eiffle tower)

And i pick the pen and write port 500 means = Portugal

QiJitsu · August 24, 2020, 1:48pm

Thanks, Erol. So, just to be clear, you wouldn’t use Olive Oil’s room for multiple subjects?

I wonder if this method you described is similar to what people like Peter of Ravenna used, as I believe he used peg + grid and not architectural palaces. Any kind of ordered list would work for this, such as 00-99 systems and alphabet systems.

I prefer using palaces that are related to the subject matter, if possible. So, if I wanted to create a grid system for science knowledge, I could create an alphabetized list of scientists to serve as the main door/hook/peg and use the method you’ve described here.

Thanks again for the inspiration.

Celtic · August 24, 2020, 5:13pm

Thank you for sharing Erol.

However, I’m not sure why this is instantiated as a memory palace. Wouldn’t the same effect be achieved by considering the people simply a peg list, and the objects a linked list (story form) to the pegs?

An alternate (to one’s standard) Major system peg list would also work I think, with conceptually related story objects supplying the linked list of objects as the additional pegs for each major peg.

Erol · August 24, 2020, 8:28pm

I would just use one room with one person and all the pegs that belong to that person for one subject.

Great ideas. Glad you found it useful.

Erol · August 24, 2020, 8:54pm

Yes it’s just an alternative to create a memory palace with pegs.

riyadist · July 27, 2022, 5:02pm

Dear Erol,

I couldn’t figure out how I manage 1000 words. Should I double number of person?