The chapel of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker was erected in 1996 in honor of the 850th anniversary of the city of Mtsensk on the site where the Nicholas Cathedral was destroyed in the 1930s.

This large brick church in classical style replaced the stone cathedral built between 1672 and 1681. Its construction began in 1810, the refectory was completed in 1837, and the main church in 1841. The refectory housed chapels of Athanasius of Alexandria and Paraskeva Friday, while the main church contained the chapels of Stephen and the Caves. The main volume of the church, a square structure, was topped with a large rotunda, while the refectory and side chapels were finished with small domes. A separate multi-tiered bell tower in eclectic style was built between 1865 and 1875. The cathedral housed a miraculous icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, carved from wood and revealed in 1415. The cathedral was located on the summit of Cathedral Mountain, previously known as Samorod Mountain, at the confluence of the Mtsna River into the Zusha.

The "House of St. Nicholas" in Mtsensk was one of the oldest churches in the Oryol region and likely existed as early as the 12th century. The first documentary mentions of it date back to 1625. The wooden cathedral was located in the center of the Mtsensk Kremlin, the Ruble City. The Kremlin also housed a wooden church of Paraskeva Friday. In 1672, construction began on a stone cathedral with a bell tower to replace the dilapidated wooden church, which was completed in 1681. Here, in 1689, the builder of the church was buried. In 1757, the cathedral suffered greatly from a city fire, which also destroyed the remnants of the wooden fortress and the church of Paraskeva Friday, which was later rebuilt elsewhere. In the same year, the old refectory and bell tower were dismantled, and new ones were laid in their place. By 1773, a more spacious refectory with a chapel in the name of Athanasius of Alexandria and a tall baroque bell tower adorned with iconostases and icons were built.

By the beginning of the 19th century, the old cathedral had deteriorated and became cramped for parishioners. Therefore, a project for a new, more majestic cathedral was commissioned from architect Abraham Ivanovich Melnikov. The new cathedral was laid in 1810 between the old cathedral and the site where the Friday church stood. In 1837, the warm refectory with two altars, one for St. Athanasius of Alexandria and one for St. Paraskeva Friday, was completed. The old cathedral was dismantled, leaving only the bell tower, and the new church was expanded with chapels on the north and south sides, completed in 1841. In 1844-1845, the cathedral was painted by artists Tikhon and Nikolai Bogdanov. In 1859, the territory was surrounded by a stone fence with an iron grille. In the 1860s, the old bell tower was dismantled, and in 1865, the construction of a new one began according to the project of Professor Gornostayev, completed ten years later.

The largest bell on the cathedral's bell tower weighed 718 poods and was cast at the Smagin factory in Moscow. In a separate opening hung an ancient messenger bell, which had previously been on one of the fortress towers. The inscription on it read: "7188 (1680) February 2, the Great Sovereign's state messenger bell in Mtsensk."

The main shrine of the cathedral was the miraculous wooden icon of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, to which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims came to venerate annually. Legend has it that the icon floated to Mtsensk in 1415 against the current of the Zusha River. The cathedral attracted the attention of travelers, who described it in their memoirs, including the poet and playwright Prince I.M. Dolgorukov and philologist I.I. Sreznevsky. The left-handed hero of N.S. Leskov also sent his character to venerate the miraculous icon before undertaking difficult work.

The church was destroyed in the 1930s, and its remnants stood until the early 1960s. In 1996, a brick chapel was built on its site.