Vladimir Monomakh began the first brick church on this site in 1101. The earlier cathedral was consecrated in 1150 and was damaged in the siege of Smolensk from 1609 to 1611, when an explosion in the basement on June 3, 1611, did serious harm. It was demolished in 1674.
The present cathedral was begun in 1677. The infobox gives completion in 1740, while the main text says 1772, so the sources conflict. The article calls the style Russian Baroque. It is a six-pillared, five-domed building, and an iconostasis of nearly full interior height separates the altar from the nave.
A great fire in the Second World War destroyed the eleventh-century Theotokos of Smolensk icon, and the cathedral sustained enormous damage. It is the principal church of the Smolensk bishopric.
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