The Chiesa degli Ottimati — the Church of the Optimates, meaning the city's ruling nobility — is one of Reggio's most unusual religious buildings, its origins reaching back to a Byzantine structure and its interior shaped by successive rebuildings over more than a millennium. The current building incorporates medieval fabric that survived the 1908 earthquake better than most of the city.
The church stands on Via Castello, close to the Aragonese castle, in the southern part of the historic centre. Its most striking feature is an early mosaic floor visible in the nave, a remnant of the Byzantine church that occupied this site in the Norman period. The juxtaposition of different architectural periods gives the interior a particular atmospheric quality.