A new assessment of the original plan of the church of Orléansville (Chlef, Algeria), and thoughts on the beginnings of the Christian basilica type

The present article focuses on the old bi-apsidal church of Orléansville of AD 324 and attempts to reconstruct the original plan of the church. By examining all existing plans of the church it appears that the two apses did not belong to the original structure. Out of this emerges the question, what did they replace? The columns of the four colonnades are quite equidistant, except the considerably wider distances between the final columns and the following eastern and western transverse walls, although the latter were not provided with antae as is typical in classical and late Roman architecture. Because of this it is suggested that the last columns of the four colonnades were not connected to the transverse walls but were turned to the sides to create a transverse colonnade at both ends. The aisles would thus surround the nave as an ambulatory on all the four sides.

A similar arrangement shows the first phase of the church in the Pachomian monastery of Pbow in Upper Egypt datable to before AD 347. Both churches demonstrate how a multi-aisled church from the pre-Constantinian period could have looked. It was similar to the Roman forum-basilica from which it typologically depends.