Thank you, Cornellia, for that excellent post! Very enlightening, don't you all agree?

I was just thinking about the uses of the - well, in Italian - piano nobile, the "second" floor of the apartment building (in many countries it would be called the first floor, of course).

From what I've read the piano nobile was usually the sort of floor between the shops and the first apartments. As I understand it, there were usually storages of the shops, but sometimes also apartments, especially those of the shop-keepers. It is quite interesting that in different times and places, this floor was considered the most comfortable and "luxurious" in the apartment building, and sometimes more like a storage.

The rest of the floors were divided into quite small and simple apartments, which usually had very few windows, and, as Cornellia already stated, were risky at times of fire.

On the other hand, living higher could have its advantages when whole apartment buildings collapsed.