Short answers, pulled from the story.
Believers worshipped inside private homes during the first three centuries of the Christian era. Saint Paul wrote to the Corinthians about a church meeting in the house of Aquila and Prisca, illustrating how early faith communities operated within domestic spaces.
Architects began designing churches that mirrored imperial audience halls called aula regia using the basilica type as the standard model for large Christian buildings. This structure featured a high central nave flanked by lower longitudinal aisles often topped with galleries or clerestories.
Eastern Orthodoxy developed a more compact centralized style rooted in mausoleum designs while Western Christianity adopted the longitudinal basilica plan. These eastern churches originally served as martyria housing the tombs of saints who died during persecutions before Constantine's conversion.
The defining feature remained the pointed or ogival arch developed alongside rib vaults and flying buttresses to enable taller buildings with larger windows. Stained glass windows served both artistic and functional purposes by flooding interiors with colored light to create heavenly atmospheres.
Andreas Karlstadt performed the first reformed communion service on Christmas Day 1521 marking a radical change in church design philosophy. Early January 1522 saw Wittenberg city council authorize imagery removal from churches affirming changes introduced by Karlstadt.
The Liturgical Movement promoted ideas that worship should be corporate activity excluding no one from sight or participation leading to simple one-room plans becoming essential features of modernity. Decree Sacrosanctum Concilium issued December 1963 encouraged active participation requiring new churches built with this mind allowing freestanding altars priests face people effect seen in Metropolitan Cathedrals Liverpool Brasília both circular buildings free-standing altars.