“My palace is vast, even by medieval
standards. The foyer is the Norman
Chapel in Palermo, severe and
beautiful and timeless.” (#302 Primavera)
So in S3 there were several scenes set in Hannibal’s memory palace, usually functioning as a kind of telepathic timey wimey love-theatre for Hannigram, but we never got a good look at its mechanics. I mean god knows what’s actually inside cannibae’s head, but memory palaces do have a long pedigree as mnemonic devices, which means that we can try to guess at how his memory palace actually works.
Memory palaces are both more prosaic and awe-inspiring than what recent popular representations might have led to think; they’re basically words, concept, or ideas attached to specific images placed in specific locations in mentally constructed buildings, such as pavilions, divans, or palaces. With the help of Jonathan Spence’s book Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, where he explicates how 16th century Jesuit intellectuals such as Ricci would have conceived of memory palaces, I’m going to try to lay out the makings of a traditional memory palace.
First, you need a building for your memory palace. They could either be
(1) drawn from reality, from buildings one had been in and recalled in memory. (2) totally fictive, products of imagination conjured up in any size or shape. (3) half-real and half-fictive, as in the case of a building one knew well enough and through the back wall of which one broke an imaginary door as a shortcut to new spaces, or in the middle of which one created a mental staircase that would lead one up to higher flowers that had not existed before.
In Hannibal’s case, it’s likely (3) half-real and half-fictive; it would make sense for his (’even by medieval standards’) vast palace to be composed of many different buildings melded, welded, and bleeding into one another. Plus, it’s been already noted that different character have access to different parts of his memory palace; Chilton doesn’t get right of entrance at all,
Alana gets his office and Will the Norman Chapel, implying that Hannibal’s memory palace does indeed consist of many different buildings, in which case this sequence of Will looking up from Hannibal’s office to find the Norman Chapel
might be not so much fantasy as a fairly faithful representation of Hannibal’s memory palace, with his office as reception area, the Norman Chapel as foyer leading to additional rooms, among which must have been Lecter Estates hidden way in the back.
Jade Green 