The arcade houses are characterized by a characteristic architecture with multiple functions:[7]
On the ground floor there are the arcades, on which the commercial life took place, and behind them the so-called "vaults" in which the goods were stored.
On the floors above there are the apartments, arranged around an inner courtyard, the so-called atrium, which was also intended to bring daylight to the interior windows. Most of the stairs in this atrium have wrought iron railings.
The arcade apartments have a so-called "beautiful" display side that faces the arcade lane, while the rear rooms were reserved for the staff of the city's patricians.[8] Even more interesting than the floors are the cellars of the arcade houses, some of which date back to the late Romanesque period and were often used to store the wine produced in the Bolzano area. They are equipped with vaults and often extend two or three stories into the ground, which is due to the narrow width of the plots of land of just 3.6 meters.[9][10] The walls, which are also the foundations and have supported the houses for several centuries, are double-shelled: ventilation passages allow the supply of fresh air and keep the cellars free of mold. When the Laubengasse was re-paved, the city building authority paid little attention to the ventilation slots in the steps and partially concreted them over, so that as a result quite a few cellars became damp and moldy.