The church is located in the old part of the city, at the foot of Montanezium fortress, in an urban complex that includes a Roman necropolis, an Orthodox church and a Jewish synagogue, a few mosques, a school, Roman and Turkish baths. After the withdrawal of the Russian Temporary Administration from Bulgaria in 1879, the local government adopted the proposal that an Orthodox church be erected instead of a mosque.  So one night, the Bulgarian inhabitants demolished the minaret and transformed it into an Orthodox church. The old church on the slope, with a low and flat ceiling, no longer corresponded to the needs of the city, so the edifice was rebuilt from the wall, with two towers, with large, spacious spaces, being consecrated in 1898. In the following years the bell tower with four bells was built, the administrative building and the monastery garden with exotic plants. Subsequently, it was restored several times to finally reach its current form. The iconostasis dates from 1879 and was made by craftsmen from the Samokov School. The church has some icons from 1879, painted by the renowned craftsman Hristo Encev, who studied in Florence, being born in the town of Koprivstița. The whole church is painted by prof. Ilia Pefev and by Apostol Apostlov, artists trained at the Debar School.