The Church of Peter and Paul is the oldest architectural monument in Smolensk. It was built in the 40s-50s of the 12th century by Prince Rostislav Mstislavich, presumably as a country church in the areas where the prince hunted.

During the Polish rule over Smolensk, the Peter and Paul Church was transformed into a Uniate cathedral. In 1675, after Smolensk returned under Moscow's control, it became Orthodox again.

The temple is distinguished by its grandeur and austerity. Its walls are made of flat bricks, known as plinths. The powerful cubic volume with three semi-cylindrical apses to the east is topped by a twelve-sided drum. Inside, the dome is supported by massive arches resting on four large pillars. In its artistic forms, the Peter and Paul Church is a typical example of a cross-domed church borrowed from Byzantium.

The dimensions of the church are modest: the length from east to west, including the altar projections, is 19.8 meters, and the width from north to south is 16.8 meters. The cubic mass of the church is divided by pilasters with semi-columns into three parts. The three altar semicircles are decorated with vertical bands and a belt of blind niches. Narrow window openings and stepped entrance portals in the center of the facade give the building a strict and severe appearance.

The austere smoothness of the walls is enlivened by a few decorative elements: bands of patterned brickwork, arcatures, decorative crosses, figured niches on the drum, and narrow pulls. Originally, the building was surrounded on three sides by a gallery-tomb, which has not been restored.

Inside the church, there are choirs and a room for the prince and his retinue located against the western wall. A narrow staircase, built into the thickness of the wall, leads to the choirs. The floors of the church were covered with glazed plinths of standard sizes, while the floors of the chapels were made of small colored ceramic tiles. Square tiles diagonally and triangular tiles along the hypotenuse had colored inclusions: light on a dark background and dark on a light one. In 1967, the church was restored according to the project of the honored cultural figure of the RSFSR P.D. Baranovsky.