Situated on a steep hill, where Andrew the Apostle is believed to have foretold the great future of the place as the cradle of Christianity in the Slavic lands, the church overlooks the historic Podil neighborhood.

In October 2018, in anticipation of the unification council of the Eastern Orthodox churches of Ukraine, the Ukrainian state decided instead to allow its direct use by the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

[1] At the beginning of the 21st century the building faced serious problems due to the unstable foundation[4][5] and it underwent major renovation at the end of the 2010s.

[6] According to the chronicle The Tale of Bygone Years, Andrew came to the slopes of the Dnipro River and erected a cross on the current location of the church.

[7] In 1086, the Grand Prince of Kiev, Vsevolod I, constructed a small church dedicated to the erection of the cross by Saint Andrew.

[citation needed] In 1690, a wooden church consecrated to Saint Andrew was moved from the Brethren's cloister in the Podil to the Andriyivsky Mount.

[nb 2] The construction commenced with a ceremony on 9 September 1744: the Empress laying the first three founding stones herself[8] The consecration was performed by Metropolitan of Kiev Raphael Zaborovsky.

[3] The Petersburg Building Chancellery first hired German architect Gottfried Johann Schädel and engineer Daniel de Bosquet to draft out the plans for the church.

[8] He was replaced by head architect of the imperial court, Bartolomeo Rastrelli, who worked out a plan which was closely based on a church of a Saint Petersburg institute.

[9] The construction itself was conducted by a team of Russian and foreign masters[10] under the direction of architect Ivan Michurin, who was previously successful in replacing the older Church of the Resurrection, on the Women's Market Square (Babiy torzhok) in Moscow.

[12] With this information, Michurin developed the construction of a stone foundation and connected it with the two-storied building of the Priest's apartments, planned by Rastrelli.

I. Vlasiev and the Governor-General of Kiev, Mikhail Ivanovich Leontyev, were placed in charge of hiring masons, carpenters, and carvers from territories now located in Belarus, Lithuania, and Ukraine.

The wood for the iconostasis, altar canopy, pulpit, and tsar's place were carved in Saint Petersburg in order to conserve time.

The red mission tiles was replaced by metal, resulting in the fact that the cupolas lost some decor and changed their form.

[4][5] Cracks have already appeared in the church's foundation,[23] resulting with the fact that a special committee was set up by the Minister of Emergency Situations Nestor Shufrich.