The church is believed to be built in 1345, on demand of Maria, Orthodox wife of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Algirdas. The building itself is surrounded by legends. As one of the oldest Orthodox churches in Vilnius, it was thought to be built on the site of a temple to the pagan god Ragutis. Nowadays, the site is supposedly marked in a small square next to the church by the Ragutis Stone, discovered in the foundations in a nearby Latako street. Another legend states that three Orthodox martyrs, Antonijus, Eustachijus and Joan, were baptised in this church soon after it was built. In the mid-1500’s, the church burned down and was later rebuilt. A shelter and a parish graveyard were established next to it. In the early 1600’s, the church came into possession of the Uniates who, after minor renovations, deserted it by turning it into a warehouse. In the early 1700’s, the church was renovated and re-consecrated under the name of St. Paraskeva. At the time, the relatively small church was surrounded by residential buildings on three sides. The Fish Market operated nearby. One of the surviving memorial plaques on its walls states that Tsar Peter I visited the church in 1705, who granted some of his conquered flags to the church and baptised the Russian poet Alexander Puskin’s grandfather Gannibal. In the following decades, the church saw little use up until 1865, when it was rebuilt by architect Nikolai Chagin. The previously stocky structure of Romanesque proportions with heavy buttresses at its corners became an ornate Neo-Byzantine building. A small square was formed nearby by tearing down the surrounding houses. The church was closed in the 1960’s. In 1981, it was renovated and turned into a gallery of LSSR Art Museum. After the restitution of independence, it was given back to the Orthodox Church.