What is a basilica?

Question

for instance with st peter's basilica, is the basilica the whole building or just the dome?

Answer 1

Hey Christopher,

The Latin word basilica (derived from Greek, Basiliké Stoà, Royal Stoa), was originally used to describe a Roman public building (as in Greece, mainly a tribunal), usually located at the centre of a Roman town (forum). In Hellenistic cities, public basilicas appeared in the 2nd century BC.

After the Roman Empire became officially Christian, the term came by extension to refer to a large and important church that has been given special ceremonial rights by the Pope. Thus the word retains two senses today, one architectural and the other ecclesiastical.

Answer 2

It is the whole building. In architecture, the Roman basilica was a large roofed hall erected for transacting business and disposing of legal matters. Such buildings usually contained interior colonnades that divided the space, giving aisles or arcaded spaces at one or both sides, with an apse at one end (or less often at each end), where the magistrates sat, often on a slightly raised dais. The central aisle tended to be wide and was higher than the flanking aisles, so that light could penetrate through the clerestory windows.

The oldest known basilica, the Basilica Porcia, was built in Rome in 184 BC by Cato the Elder during the time he was censor. Other early examples include the one at Pompeii (late 2nd century BC).

In the early Imperial period, a basilica for large audiences also became a feature in the palaces. In the 3rd century AD, the governing elite appeared less easily in the forums. "They now tended to dominate their cities from opulent palaces and country villas, set a little apart from traditional centers of public life.

In the 4th century, Christians were prepared to build larger and more handsome edifices for worship than the furtive meeting places they had been using. The usable model at hand, when Constantine wanted to memorialize his imperial piety, was the familiar conventional architecture of the basilicas [1]. These had a center nave with one aisle at each side and an apse at one end: on this raised platform sat the bishop and priests. Constantine built a basilica of this type in his palace complex at Trier, later very easily adopted for use as a church. It is a long rectangle two stories high, with ranks of arch-headed windows one above the other, without aisles (no mercantile exchange in this imperial basilica) and at the far end, beyond a huge arch, the apse in which Constantine held state.

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. This forecourt was entered from outside through a range of buildings along the public street. This was the architectural groundplan of St Peter's Basilica in Rome, until first the forecourt, then all of it was swept away in the 15th century to make way for a great modern church on a new plan.

Answer 3

The whole building.

The Latin word basilica was originally used to describe a Roman public building usually located at the centre of a Roman town (forum).

After the Roman Empire became officially Christian, the term came by extension to refer to a large and important church that has been given special ceremonial rights by the Pope. Thus the word retains two senses today, one architectural and the other ecclesiastical.

Answer 4

It is a type of religious architecture, but it distinct from cathedrals or chapels because it holds a holy relic.

For example, St. Peter's Basilica houses the body of St. Peter. So, yes it is the whole building.

Answer 5

The distinguishing architectural features of a basilica church are an apse and a clerestory roof.

Answer 6

It is a church. I believe that the term normally appliies to Roman Catholic churches or those of the Greek and Russian Orthodox religions.

Answer 7

The whole building.

Answer 8

its like a small church with lots of art in it - catholic architecture - frescos on the walls ( paintings )

Answer 9

its the whole building

Answer 10

Its a church. I think it describes a type of church.