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Apartments in Berlin tend to have ridiculously oversized entrance halls in my experience. There must be some other driving force here.

• Wohlf 7y ago
  May not be the reason, but building codes and taxation can lead to strange outcomes like these. Then again, it may just be superficial, since the entrance hall is the first thing people see.
  • taejo 7y ago
    Some of them are nice, it's true, but I'm mostly thinking of the 19th-century Mietskasernen (rental barracks) where the original objective was to pack as many people into the space as possible. I think part of the problem is that they were originally expected to have people sleeping in every room except maybe the kitchen, so you wouldn't want to have to walk through what is now the living/dining room to get to another room, so you have to reach every room from the hall. So the hall can be long, twisty, narrow and dark... as long as it lets everyone get from the staircase to their bedroom.