Martyrs and Basilicas Draft. The space between apse and altar was usually enclosed and raised. This recalls the four-aisled Constantinian pilgrimage churches of St. Peters, the Lateran, the Church of the Nativity, and the Holy Sepulchre. One of these rooms may have been designed to hold the offerings, the other may have held precious objects or clothing for the clergy. A wide variety of shapes and relative locations of baptismal fonts.
Shapes range from round to cruciform, octagonal to multi-lobed.
Many of the tombs are covered with mosaic markers, or more commonly with inscribed plaques. The existence of counter altars and chancels. These were shrines, found in the rear of the main nave and were probably designed to hold or mark relics of martyrs. Two apses are mainly found in Africa and Spain, and extremely rare elsewhere. Atria were rare in African churches.