Aula Palatina, Trier

Though not built as a church, the Constantinian Basilica in Trier is one of the best surviving examples of basilica architecture from the late Roman period. The Aula Palatina- literally, 'palace hall’- was constructed around 310 as the audience chamber of Constantine’s palace in Trier. It is the largest extant hall from antiquity, possibly based on the much larger audience hall of the Flavian imperial palace on the Palatine Hill in Rome.    

 

Trier (Augusta Treverorum under the Romans), a provincial capital, had emerged during the crisis of the third century as one of the principal cities of the western empire. Its fortifications and strategic setting made it a favoured base of operations for emperors who campaigned along the Rhine. In the reforms of Diocletian Trier became one of the four tetrarchic capitals, and Constantius Chlorus and his son Constantine the Great rebuilt the city on a monumental scale with extensive palaces, a circus, mint and the largest baths outside of Rome. The remains of these buildings and their impressive fortifications (particularly the famous Porta Nigra) are some of the most significant examples of Roman civic architecture left to us.     

 

Tradition dictates that one of the imperial residences in Trier was converted to a church, under the direction of St Helena, mother of Constantine. Her contemporary, the Bishop St Maximin, expanded this into a truly massive complex of four connected basilica-churches, a large baptistry and other related buildings. The current cathedral and neighbouring Liebfrauenkirche, though impressive in their own right, comprise only small parts of this complex, the remnants of it now all but subsumed into later medieval and baroque rebuildings and embellishments. This, along with other ambitious church building projects, gave the bishops of Trier immense prestige and the See remained one of the most important in western Europe well into the middle ages. 

   

The Basilica of Constantine remained a palatial hall incorporated into the palace of the archbishop-electors of the city. Only after the Second World War was it converted into a church, being acquired by the German Evangelical Lutherans. Today it still dwarfs many of the buildings around it.