Until recently medical education has been largely silent on those aspects of the physician's life, both professional and unprofessional, that differ from place to place. This has contributed to health inequity through an undersupply of health care workers to many communities. A growing movement for social accountability in medical education has made consideration of place an emergent topic in the field. We describe the history of place in medical education, consider how our own institution has attempted to construct a place-based education program, and suggest how the wider place-based education literature can inform the construction of place-sensitive medical education curricula.