The city of Menzelinsk was founded between 1584 and 1586 on the Menzela River, near its confluence with the Kama, as a fortress, and until the mid-18th century it was often referred to as the Menzelinsk Ostrog. Menzelinsk maintained its defensive role until the end of the 18th century, and it was not captured by the Bashkirs during the three uprisings of the 18th century, nor by Pugachev in 1774. In 1781, it became the district town of the Ufa province. Although the city was never large, with a population of 7,542 in 1897 and 15,200 in 1993, it played an important economic role. The Menzelinsk fair at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 20th century had significant capital turnover, which made the city well-maintained and cultured. As early as 1872, a women's gymnasium opened here, the first among district towns in the eastern part of Russia. The city had two parish churches: the Nikolsky Cathedral and the Ilyinskaya Cemetery Church, as well as three monastery churches: the stone Ilyinsky and the wooden Voznesensky and Nikolsky in the Prokhor-Ilyinsky Women's Monastery, founded in 1855. Unfortunately, during the Soviet era, all the monastery churches were demolished.

As early as the mid-17th century, there was a wooden church in the Menzelinsk Ostrog. In its place, in the early 19th century, a three-altar stone Nikolsky Cathedral was built. The chapels were consecrated in honor of the miraculous Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God and St. Theodosius of Totma. The construction of the cathedral began in 1807, and the main altar was consecrated in 1813. Usually, cathedrals in district towns were built at the state’s expense, but the church in Menzelinsk was mainly erected with funds collected by retired non-commissioned officer Matvey Dmitrievich Sitnikov, who spent several years raising money by walking all over Russia.

In 1878, the cathedral suffered greatly from a fire, and in the 1880s and 1890s it was restored with the funds of the Yelabuga merchant and large landowner of the Menzelinsk district Ivan Grigorievich Stakheev. The Nikolsky Cathedral is a beautiful example of the Empire style. Unfortunately, the tall five-tiered bell tower was lost. The cathedral has an original volumetric-planning composition: the central nave along with the apse is slightly projected forward. The entrances from the western, southern, and northern facades are decorated with porticos of the Doric order. The central volume is topped with a large-diameter cylinder with two rows of openings, covered by a hemispherical dome with a lantern on a blind drum. The refectory is a single-story elongated structure with five high rectangular window openings. The bell tower is lost. This is a monument of architecture in the classical style.