What is the difference between a church , a cathedral , and a basilica ?
Mills Baker :
Achurchis a " house of worship , " a building in which Christians pull together to execute the rituals of their religion and interact with one another and hold spiritual use and so on . They can be very unmistakable , very unsubdivided .

Acathedralis a church which is also the " fanny , " in the bureaucratic sensory faculty more than the actual sensory faculty , of a bishop ( or , in some denominations , another comparably high - ranking ecclesiastic human body ) . You therefore normally see just one duomo per designation per urban center . Because bishops are responsible for an area — in Catholicism adiocese — a cathedral can also be thought of as the church building associated with the administration of an area .
In vulgar usage , people call reallybigchurches cathedral pretty often , but this is imprecise and technically false .
Abasilicawas originally a Roman construction feature certain architectural elements that supported its use as a public , open adeptness for business , trading , etc . These typically — but not always — included colonnades , nave , and aisle , not unlike a modern pedestrian mall .

When some church were build with standardised characteristic in the time of early Christianity , they were calledbasilicas . Later , in Catholicism , the terminus acquire a young meaning : the Holy Father fate some churches basilicas for a change of reasons , and they become of import sites :
So basilicas as Christian building are mainly a Catholic phenomenon . And indeed , the world ’s most famous basilica is of course St. Peter ’s in Rome , design in part by Michelangelo , its plaza and baldacchino by Bernini , its balcony where crowds see their pontiff , etc .
This spot originally come along on Quora . Click hereto view .