The church is located on the extreme north-eastern extremity of the promontory on which the city stands, in an area previously occupied by the small church of San Pietro ad Ripas.

On the site where the church currently stands, outside the protected center of the city, there was a chapel, documented in sources as early as the 13th century. 

Probably founded in the 11th century and rebuilt in the 12th, the co-cathedral stands on the site of a pre-existing Byzantine structure, on the northern part of the Tropea cliff, around which the medieval center of the city grew.