List of Roman basilicas
A basilica in Ancient Rome was a large public building where business or legal matters could be transacted. Origins. In ancient Italy, basilicas began as large, covered buildings near city centers, adjacent to the forum, often at the opposite end from a temple. The building's form gradually came to be rectangular, covered with a post-and-lintel roof over an open hall flanked by columns and aisles extending from one end to the other, with entrances on the long sides, one of which would often be the side facing the forum. As such buildings came  be used for judicial purposes, a semicircular apse would be built at one end, to give a place for the magistrate. Traditional civic basilicas and "bouleuteria" declined in use with the weakening of the curial class () in the 4th and 5th centuries, while their structures were well suited to the requirements of congregational religious liturgies. The conversion of these types of buildings into Christian basilicas was also of symbolic significance, asserting the dominance of Christianity and supplanting the old political function of public space and the city-centre with an emphatically Christian social statement.