This emperors's mother Helena lived in Rome in the Sessorium Palace; She had its smaller, hall-shaped aula converted into the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme for the relics she had brought with her from Jerusalem, while of the palace's larger civil basilica, built in the style of a three-aisled columned basilica, only the apse remains as a free-standing ruin.
The aulas usually followed the single-nave building type, not that of the Basilica with a higher central nave flanked by two or more lower longitudinal aisles[1] which was more commonly used for market halls in the Roman era.
The monumental aulae regiae served as venues for court ceremonies at audiences and receptions, and in the Middle Ages also for Hoftage, the irregular gatherings of the powerful of the Holy Roman Empire, as well as for coronation meals, wedding feasts or other banquets.
The Carolingian hall buildings, unlike the ancient ones, were usually not accessed across the longitudinal axis despite the apses that had been adopted, but - as in the traditional Franconian and Middle German house - via the transverse axis, on the long side of the building, like the aulae of the Palace of Aachen or the Palace of Goslar.
The royal hall of the Imperial Palace Ingelheim (c. 780) has been digitally reconstructed.