Peristyle

[7] In the Christian ecclesiastical architecture that developed from the Roman basilica, a courtyard peristyle and its garden came to be known as a cloister.

In the grandest development of the urban peristyle house, as it evolved in Roman North Africa, often one part of the portico was eliminated for a larger open space.

Simon P. Ellis wrote in the American Journal of Archaeology that it represented "the disappearance of the Roman peristyle house marks the end of the ancient world and its way of life.

Noting that as houses and villas were increasingly abandoned in the fifth century, a few palatial structures were expanded and enriched, as power and classical culture became concentrated in a narrowing class, and public life withdrew to the basilica, or audience chamber, of the magnate.

[12] In the Eastern Roman empire, late antiquity lingered longer: Ellis identified the latest-known peristyle house built from scratch as the Villa of the Falconer at Argos, Peloponnese, dating from the style of its floor mosaics to about 530–550.