I remember my first BMW the doors, when locked, stayed locked. You could not open them from inside the car, if you broke the windows, you could only fit what went through the windows, and I had an Audi where the back seat-backs had locks to prevent access to the trunk from inside.
My impression was, Europe does not have as much violent crime - armed robbery - but for that same reason, sneak thievery and burglary when nobody was home or stealth at night was more common. (Also what I gleaned from fiction about England in the late 1800’s). As a result, an emphasis on keeping things locked. Plus, construction back then (and carrying over to today?) emphasized very solid doors. On older buildings, metal bar frames over the lower or basement windows is also not uncommon.
In modern North American construction, it seems a solid steel door is common nowadays - made from 2 steel sheets, with foam insulation inside, possibly with a metal frame, sold pre-mounted. A convenient feature was that this could be pressed to give the appearance of a wood panel door (at least, on the outside). Steel doors also do not warp or shrink like wood can over time. Also, with foam its insulation value was better. The multiple deadbolts and chains was a common trope played for laughs, for example, in movies and shows involving New York apartments, and presumably the same reason - burglars, when away or at night.
My mum’s front and back doors (in the UK) are like this. I agree it is not very safe unless you leave the key in the door, which she does at the front. I recently bought a new house and it doesn’t have a keyhole in the inside of the front door, just a knob to twist, which is much better. The back, French doors, are the same as my mum’s though - no key, no exit.
Maybe the OP’s apartment actually was a bank previously?! Old banks do get converted sometimes. I lived in a flat while I was at university that literally was that (the address was ‘The Old Bank’ or something close to that) and the walls were about 18 inches thick in places where I assume the vault had been. The door wasn’t like the OP described though!
A friend lived in the Czech Republic for a year, and had a door with a deadbolt that required a key to exit. It was just a stout door with a deadbolt on one side, and you only turned the key once. But he said when he first moved in, he worried about it being a fire hazard. And then he realized that his building, like every building on his street, was solid concrete construction. The odds of those buildings catching on how was very low. And he decided to relax and accept the same standards as the locals.
He did explain carefully how i should use the door when i visited, as it was quite different from the typical US door.
I associate doors as described by the OP with New York apartments. Those doors are covered in locks.
My door in the UK is a fine wooden door, but with a simple deadbolt which doesn’t lock automatically when you close it from the outside - actually pretty unusual in the UK. When I first moved in, a few times I went to bed with the door completely unlocked. Luckily I have now got into the habit.
I had a house in Italy which had a metal door with very substantial locks, involving multiple turns. But I think, being a rural property, it was regarded as being vulnerable to thievery in the off-season - it also had metal shutters on all the windows for use when the house was unoccupied, and a large metal gate at the end of the drive..
German front doors usually (at least in my experience) have two locking mechanisms, one with a buckle that will lock automatically when you shut the door and one with a bolt that you need to operate manually with your key. Both will lock the door, and when you turn the key to open the door it will unlock both with a single action, but the latter is more secure. Most people (including myself) will only use the former as they leave home, out of sheer laziness; but many household insurance policies stipulate that you have insurance cover only if you lock the bolt.
Doors here have that option. I didn’t activate it in mine - I don’t like the possibility of stepping outside for a second and getting locked outside my apartment.
In the Czech Republic, to where I have moved from Canada, I can confirm that some doors are like that. This doesn’t describe the average modern door; typically in this country, doors in general are built differently than in North America and it’s actually common to have a door that I would consider flimsy, with two thin layers superimposed on each other (assuming it’s not built from one piece) - a narrower inner layer that inserts into the doorway, and an outer layer that covers the outer part of the doorway. (Edit: this is mainly in the case of inside doors, I don’t know if too many front doors are built this way).
However, I have seen these heavy doors in some homes. Typically in older apartments in city buildings built more or less between WWI and WWII, and they are heavier than average, have faux leather padding on the side that’s inside the apartment, and very secure locks. I think I’ve seen them in some apartments in Commie blocks on housing projects as well, probably as retrofits.
In general, in this country, homes tend to be quite secure, which seems funny to me given how safe Prague tends to be. In the suburbs (often villages), you practically never have a lawn accessible from the sidewalk as in a typical North American suburb, but houses generally have a gated fence in front, and all entrance doors of houses and of individual apartments are supposed to have a front door which has no doorknob but a handle and a lock and once you close the door from outside, you need your key to open the door. Insurance companies require it as an anti-burglary measure. I think this is paranoid and I would resent not being able to leave my front door unlocked in my own house. It’s not rare for people in this country to forget their keys at home and then have to waste time and spend good money on calling a locksmith to be able to get back in.
I live in western Switzerland and our door is definitely more solid than the ones I remember from my days in the US. But the lock seems about the same.
We do have to be a bit careful about burglary though as they happen with some frequency in the area, mostly from people coming over the border from France.
Did every apartment in the building have the same kind of door? There are fire safety laws that require some doors in a building to be fireproof. For example a bathroom on an evacuation route, a fireproof bathroom is a safe(er) place to shelter while waiting for rescue if they can’t evacuate.
Deadbolts which need a key on the inside aren’t that rare in the USA.
The common use case for those is front doors where there’s a tall narrow window alongside the knob side of the door. Easy for bad guys to bust a hole in that window, reach in and turn the thumb turn on the deadbolt, then turn the knob and let themselves in. They can even use a glass cutter to make their access hole if being silent was important.
Having the deadbolt be keyed, not thumbturn, on the inside is the cure for this attack. But does suggest it’s smart to keep a key nearby but out of reach of an arm reaching through the window from the outside. Leaving the key in the lock defeats the purpose completely.
Many homeowners are far more worried (paranoid?) about crime than fires.
Ah yes, this is me, my front door has glass panels, so having to turn a key from the inside makes sense. I do keep my doorkey next to the front door though (out of sight from the outside). You can see what I mean here
I think this might be an exageration, but anyway, you might have encountered a lever tumbler lock, which does in fact require multiple turns to lock/unlock.
There are many realisations of lever locks, but only a few have achieved lasting success in the market place. In France, for example, four-lever door locks are used, but as in many countries, are losing popularity to pin tumbler cylinder locks. In Italy, double-bit lever locks using sliding levers are used.
Wiki mentions up to five lever locks. In this part of Yurp seven or even nine are common. For safes 14 is not unheard of - that is, basic safes for valuables at home or in office, not bank strength.
I’m in Northern Italy. I’ve now stayed in 4 places in this region with doors just like this (though two, in older buildings, only required 3 turns of the key, not 7). I’ve encountered similar doors in France, though. (Also in China, weirdly, which is another very-low-crime country.) And in the last 2 places I’ve stayed—larger apartment buildings—the doors appear to be the same on every unit.
Again, and as posted by several above. Violent crime and property crime are not the same thing. Europe is not “low-crime” when it comes to burglary, car theft, pick-pocketing ASF, hence the locks.
Italy is especially infamous (rightly or wrongly) for petty crime.
I’ve seen a lot of OP-style doors across Europe — multi-pin locks engaging into all four sides — and they fascinate me. I often wonder how firefighters would gain entry, but those doors are usually part of a broader building system: solid masonry walls, grilled or absent street-level windows, and front doors that open up quickly to an upper living area.
That’s why they work there. The doors are designed to complement the home’s overall security so they aren’t the weak point. In the U.S., where most houses are stick-built, a burglar or a firefighter can relatively easily break a window or even force through an exterior wall in a training scenario. Installing a heavy, multi-pin European door on a typical American frame would make little sense — it wouldn’t meaningfully improve security because the surrounding structure would remain the vulnerability.
My WAG. Buildings in Europe are built to last. Over generations and decades the few upgrades available to antique apartments with charm or those lacking it are upgrades to portals (windows, balconies, doors). And really, even the best door isn’t THAT extravagant and yet sets your location apart from the Jones, Martins, Gonzagas.
Some of the most impressive modern domestic windows I have ever seen where in Czech Republic a few years ago. My mind still boggles are the scale, technique, and installation of the modern window construction in that place.
Same here in central Switzerland. No smoke detectors either, but there are fire extinguishers, which are tested regularly, in all shared areas.
I live in a multi-family house. The main door automatically locks.
The door to our condo has a type of three-point locking and needs two complete turns to lock completely. Besides the latch at the same height as the key, there are two horizontal pins which go into the frame. These two pins are at the same height as 2 of the 3 door hinges.
We replaced some of our windows and will replace the others within the next few years. The new windows have similar pins and have locks. For ease of exit, we decided on push-button locks, even though we could have gotten keys. We decided on locks because we are on the ground floor and because burglaries are on the rise.
We were amazed that our original windows, installed in 1990s, are not made with safety glass. The new ones are.
I looked at my apartment door here (Germany, apartment built 2020-22). It’s RC2 class (withstands a burglary attempt with wedges, crowbar and screwdrivers for 3 minutes). This seems to be the minimum prescribed by German construction standards. Fully locking the door actuates three bolts, at the middle, bottom and top of the lock-side edge.
Emergency services seem to be able to open such doors without problems, as they can make as much noise as needed. For the “person behind closed door” scenario ambulances call a fire truck.
The case protected against would be a daytime burglary attempt with nobody within easy hearing distance (which would be quite possible in our 7-apartment building, in the daytime in the July-August vacation season).
A secondary consideration is noise insulation - the minimum building standard in Germany apparently is 27 dB. There is a rubber lip at the bottom of the apartment door which is pressed down when a hinge-side stub presses against the doorjamb on closing - necessary for thermal insulation and not letting cooking smells escape into the stairwell.
The weak point WRT burglary is mostly windows, though - the minimum of RC2 is not met when a window is set to tilt. Most burglaries in Germany use windows carelessly left in tilt position. Modern apartments use forced ventilation but older ones do not.
