In the early 1990s, with the city's Russian Orthodox population lacking a designated cathedral and utilising the originally Lutheran/Calvinist Church of the Rood as something of a stand-in, plans were put in place by Metropolitan Kirill (a senior member of the Russian Orthodox church) to build the striking, centrally-located Christ the Saviour Cathedral not far from Victory Square.

Construction began in 1995 and President Boris Yeltsin paid a personal visit to the site a year later, delivering a capsule of earth from the cathedral of the same name in Moscow. It was eventually completed and its upper church consecrated by Patriarch Alexy II on 10th September 2006, exactly 20 years after the opening of Kaliningrad's first Russian Orthodox church.