Each of the four storeys goes back nearly 40ft with a room on each floor of the apartment, crammed into an alley between an old tenement block and a tower block in Warsaw, Poland.

The Colosseum, built in Rome between 70 and 82AD, had four storeys above ground and three below, all composed of arches stacked on top of each other.

Seismologist Barry Hull said a magnitude 7 quake with an epicentre within a 50km radius of Melbourne's CBD would cause extensive structural damage, particularly to older buildings up to four storeys.