On the street, there are usually several shops and several separate entrances where the doorways give access to the extra select apartments above. But most tenants have to go through the central portal. Upon entering they will find themselves in a courtyard upon which open many windows of the tiers of rooms in the upper stories.

From the courtyard, several staircases rise to the tenements above. In the apartments on the first floor are the more comfortable suites, each with a series of rooms. The quality falls rapidly as the tenants scale higher. Juvenal writes,

"If the (fire) alarm goes at ground level, the last to fry will be the attic tenant, way up among the nesting pigeons, with nothing but tiles between himself and the weather."