At the start of the 4th century at Rome there was a change in burial and funerary practice, moving away from earlier preferences for inhumation in cemeteries popular from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD to the newer practice of burial in catacombs and inhumation inside Christian basilicas themselves. Conversely, new basilicas often were erected on the site of existing early Christian cemeteries and "martyria", related to the belief in Bodily Resurrection, and the cult of the sacred dead became monumentalised in basilica form. Traditional civic basilicas and "bouleuteria" declined in use with the weakening of the curial class () in the 4th and 5th centuries, while their structures were well suited to the requirements of congregational liturgies. The conversion of these types of buildings into Christian basilicas was also of symbolic significance, asserting the dominance of Christianity and supplanting the old political function of public space and the city-centre with an emphatic Christian social statement. Traditional monumental civic amenities like "gymnasia", "palaestrae", and "thermae" were also falling into disuse, and became favoured sites for the construction of new churches, including basilicas.