The Casino of Chatby is smaller that a Basilica; but it is not necessarily on that stone platform [on which the Casino stands] that the Basilica stood. My impression is that on the site of the Martyrium --originally a small chapel built on the tomb-- a larger church was then erected, but not only a church...there were certainly many other buildings. We have to think of something that attracted pilgrims so there was the necessity of more than a church.
The fact that in 1218 the governor of Alexandria decided to put down the church, because he feared that it could be used by an enemy army as a stronghold for an attack, speaks for itself. A church, even a large church, would not present a threat but there probably was a complex of buildings.
Stephan Huller has had a life long interest in religion and spirituality 
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."