Basilica of Maxentius
The Basilica of Maxentius was the last building to be built in the Roman Forum before the fall of Rome. It was started by the Emperor Maxentius in the early 300's AD, and it was a big meeting-space where officials could hold court cases, or public meetings. Maxentius' architects were very up-to-date and designed the building with all sorts of new features. It was to be built of brick and concrete (which was normal), but with a great brick and concrete vaulted roof, where most earlier basilicas had wooden roofs.
Looking into one of the side aisles.
See the great concrete vaults? Those are only the vaults of the side aisles; it was originally much higher in the center nave (you can see what's left of the center roof starting at the top of the picture, and a chunk of the vault that fell down, surrounded by the metal fence in the front).
When Maxentius was killed by Constantine in the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD (where Constantine converted to Christianity), Constantine took over construction of the half-finished basilica.
Maxentius had planned for people to come into the basilica from the middle of the long side facing the Forum, but Constantine decided to change the plan and have people come in from the middle of the short side instead (the way people do in churches). It's interesting to see that architects were already changing the entrance to the short side before people began to use basilicas for churches.
This picture shows some of the short side, along with a bit of the marble that once decorated the inside of the basilica.
Constantine also put an enormous statue of himself on the other short side, opposite the door where you would see it as soon as you came in.
Some of the pieces of the statue are still around today:
Even though the Basilica of Maxentius is not in very good shape today, this was not the fault of the builders - it was knocked down by a bad earthquake that hit Rome in the 800's AD, when the basilica was already 500 years old.
To find out more about the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine, check out these books from Amazon.com or from your library:
Roman Architecture, by Frank Sear (1983). The standard college textbook.
