The monument, created for the 45th anniversary of the burial of the founder of Kherson, Prince Potemkin, in the city cathedral, was made based on a model created in 1831 by academician I. P. Martos. At the end of 1836, it took its place in the center of the city. The massive granite pedestal for the monument was designed by Italian architect Franz Karlovich Boffo, who actively worked in Odessa in the 1820s and 1830s and created the pedestal for the monument to Richelieu, also a work of Martos. In 1840, a boulevard named after Potemkin was laid around the monument and enclosed with a fence.

After the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, the Potemkin monument was covered with tarpaulin, earning it the nickname 'the Kherson ghost.' Ultimately, on April 27, 1927, it was removed from its pedestal and relocated to the courtyard of the Kherson Historical and Archaeological Museum. In early 1944, when Kherson was liberated by Soviet troops, the monument disappeared. In 2003, for the 225th anniversary of the city, it was restored with numerous changes by Kherson sculptor Yurik Stepanyan.