On the 10th of April 1832 the emperor Nicholas I approved the project of the Temple offered by the architect K. A. Tone. The place for the construction of the Temple of Christ the Savior in memory of the Napoleonic invasion was chosen on the bank of the Moscow river, not so far from the Kremlin. On the 10th of September 1839 the solemn laying of the new Temple took place. The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was building during almost 44 years under the emperors Alexander I, Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III.

The best architects, builders and artists of the time worked on the creation of the Temple. The construction of the Church was led by a student of K. A. Tones, an architect I. S. Kaminski. A significant contribution in the interiors decoration of the Temple was made by an architect A. Kossov. Unique painting was created by the artists of the Russian Academy of Arts: V. Surikov, Baron T. Neff, N. Koshelev, G. Semiradskiy, I. Kramskoy, V. P. Vereshchagin, P. Pleshanov, V. Markov. The authors of the facade sculptures are the following sculptors: baron P. Klodt, N. Ramazanov, A. Loganovskiy. The Temple gates were performed according to the models created by count F. Tolstoy.

The temple was the real chronicle of the fight of the Russian people against the conqueror Napoleon, on the walls of the temple there were written the names of the officers of Russian army, died in the war of 1812 year.

On the 13th of December 1880 the new Temple was given the name of the Cathedral of Jesus Christ the Savior. The consecration took place on the 26th of May 1883.

Artist V. V. Vereschagin thought that the project of the Cathedral made by «a quite incompetent architect Tone is a direct reproduction of the famous Taj Mahal in Agra».

In the spring of 1912 year the monument to Emperor Alexander III was mounted in the square near the Church. It was a work of a Professor of architecture A. N. Pomerantsev and a sculptor A. M. Opekushin (the monument existed only for six years and then it was destroyed in 1918).

On the 5th of December 1931 the Cathedral-memorial of military glory, the main Temple of Russia was savagely destroyed. Many years after the explosion at the place of majestic Temple a monstrous pit was yawning, where in 1958 the pool "Moscow" appeared as a monument of abuse and oblivion of patriotic glory and history.

In 1988 a social movement appeared which appeals for the restoration of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, one of the main ideas was the idea of repentance. In 1992 the Fund for construction of the temple was established and from 1994 its construction was started. The present building resembles a little bit in appearance the temple with the same name created in the XIX century. In 2000 the Temple was consecrated.