Describing Basilica Architecture

admin — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:25:06 +0000

All of you must have heard about the famous “Basilica architecture”. In architecture, the word “Basilica” was used to describe a large hall constructed for business transaction and disposition of legal matters. The oldest Basilica, known as “Basilica Porcia” was built by Cato, the Elder in Rome in 184 BC. Some of the early examples of Basilica include the one at Pompeii (built in 2nd century BC). As early as the time of Augustus, a public basilica for transacting business had been part of any agreement that measured itself a city, used like the late medieval covered market houses of northern Europe (in which the meeting room was set above the arcades due to the lack of urban space). Possibly within a month of Constantine’s defeat of Maxentius at the battle of the Milvian Bridge, work began on the church which would be the official seat of the Bishop of Rome, St. John in the Lateran. The church was built on the site previously occupied by the barracks of his former rival. A Christian basilica of the 4th or 5th century stood behind its entirely enclosed forecourt ringed with a colonnade or arcade, like the stoa or peristyle that was its ancestor or like the cloister that was its descendant. Ecclesiastical basilicas were built later, on the basis of semi-public secular Basilicas. The grandeur, size and appearance of this Basilica signaled gradual transfer of civic power into Episcopal hands, underway in the fifth century. In accordance to this rule the Basilicas were divided into two classes, the major and minor basilicas. Other rankings put the cathedral (or co-cathedral) of a bishop ahead of all other churches in the same diocese, even if they have the title of basilica. Well, the above article describes Basilicas to some extent or the other.

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Describing Basilica Architecture