Note the two side aisles flanking the nave and the row of offices or shops at the bottom of the plan.  What remains of this basilica today is nothing but a foundation  with stumps where columns had been.

In this photograph, we see only the two side aisles that ran along the Forum and the nave; the three surviving columns of the temple of Castor and Pollux are just behind the Basilica.   Click here for a reconstruction of the Basilica Julia.

The most common function of a basilica was as a court house.  The Basilica Julia housed the court of the Centumviri (literally, one hundred men, although the number was actually one hundred and eighty).  Often the hundred and eighty  jurors were divided up into four groups of forty five, separated by screens or curtains.  One case in particular, tried before the four panels acting together, attracted many spectators, who lined the walls and filled the upper galleries, hanging over the railings and making a lot of noise.  In this case,  Pliny the Younger represented an aristocratic woman whose eighty-year old father had disinherited her ten days after he had taken a new wife.  The Centumviral court decided in favor of Pliny's client (Letters, 6.33).

The spectators who frequented the Basilica Julia whiled away the time between trials by playing games on boards inscribed in the steps and aisles.

With the onset of Christianity, the basilica plan was used for churches, as can be seen in the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome and St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan.
 

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