The original church, built in the 19th century, took more than 40 years to build, and was the site of the 1882 world premiere of the 1812 Overture composed by Tchaikovsky.

When Napoleon Bonaparte retreated from Moscow, Tsar Alexander I signed a manifesto on 25 December 1812 declaring his intention to build a cathedral in honor of Christ the Saviour "to signify Our gratitude to Divine Providence for saving Russia from the doom that overshadowed Her" and as a memorial to the sacrifices of the Russian people.

In the meantime Alexander I was succeeded by his brother Nicholas I. Profoundly Orthodox and patriotic, the new Tsar disliked the Neoclassicism and Freemasonry of the design selected by his predecessor.

He commissioned his favorite architect Konstantin Thon to create a new design, taking as his model Hagia Sophia in the Byzantine capital Constantinople (present day Istanbul, Turkey).

Its painting was overseen by Evgraf Sorokin, and thereafter some of the best Russian painters (Ivan Kramskoi, Vasily Surikov, V. P. Vereshchagin) continued to embellish the interior for another twenty years.

[5] Although Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was written with the building's completion in mind, it had its world premiere in a tent outside the unfinished church in August 1882.

[6] The inner sanctum of the church (naos) was ringed by a two-floor gallery, its walls inlaid with rare sorts of marble, granite, and other stones.

Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, the USSR's official state atheism resulted in the 1921–1928 anti-religious campaign, during which many "church institution[s] at [the] local, diocesan or national level were systematically destroyed.

It was to have modernistic, buttressed tiers to support a gigantic statue of Lenin perched on top of a dome with his arm raised in the air.

On 24 February 1930, the economic department of the OGPU sent a letter to the Chairman of the Central Executive Committee asking to remove the golden domes of the Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

The construction of the Palace of Soviets was ultimately halted due to a lack of funds, problems with flooding from the nearby Moskva River, and the outbreak of World War II.

The history of the site's Cathedral, the unbuilt Palace of the Soviets, and the Moskva Pool was commonly summarized with the ironic expression "First there was a church, then rubbish, and now shame" (Russian: Сперва был храм, потом — хлам, а теперь — срам., romanized: Sperva byl khram, potom – khlam, a teper' – sram.).

[citation needed] In February 1990, the Russian Orthodox Church received permission from the Soviet government to restore the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour.

The first Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who died of heart failure on 23 April 2007, lay in state in the cathedral prior to his burial in Novodevichy Cemetery.

[13] In 2009 the cathedral was visited by Metropolitan Jonah (Paffhausen), former primate of the Orthodox Church in America, who celebrated the Liturgy with Patriarch Kirill I.