The style is commonly called Byzantine; but some of the most striking features of the churches of Ravenna - the colonnades, the mosaics, perhaps the cupolas - are not so much Byzantine as representative of early Christian art generally.
This gives access to a whole series of halls and private rooms (halls " of the Colonnades," " of the Double Axes," " Queen's Megaron" with bath-room attached and remains of the fish fresco, " Treasury " with ivory figures and other objects of art), together with extensive remains of an upper storey.
The facades presented continuous colonnades on each floor with semicircular high stilted arches, leaving a very small amount of wall space.
It consists of two storeys with open colonnades, forming a long loggia on the ground and first floors, with seventeen arches on the sea front and eighteen on the other facade.
They were in the form of great courtyards surrounded by colonnades and chambers.