[1] A Polish traveller mentions that a mosque was begun in 1667, contrary to international agreements,[2] and the one eventually completed was reportedly raised in secret.

Following the Russian victory against the Ottomans in the war of 1828–1829 and the subsequent Peace of Adrianople, which transferred the city to Wallachian control, the building became a church permanently on the initiative of Grand Duke Michael Pavlovich.

The intention was to remind residents of their liberation from Turkish control, and in 1831, the Bishop of Buzău, upon the request of the Grand Duke, sent an archimandrite to bless the church.

The eastern windows were covered, while the narrow ones of the north and south ends were replaced by large simple ones, rounded at the top and still in place.

[1] The communist authorities wanted to demolish the church in the 1950s, and it was saved through the persistence of a priest who risked imprisonment to make numerous requests to that effect.

This was executed in Russia and given as a gift by Grand Duke Michael in 1834, along with a number of leather-bound religious books written in Old Church Slavonic.