In 1838, the abbess of the Nikolaevsky Starotorzhsky Monastery, Abbess Taisia, decided to build a stone church, the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity. The initial project was developed by engineer Lvov, a member of the provincial construction commission. The drawings were then significantly revised by the Project and Estimate Commission of the Main Directorate of Transport and Public Buildings in St. Petersburg to improve the architecture. The contractor was a peasant from the Nizhny Novgorod province, Pavel Guryanovich Trukhin. Construction lasted from 1839 to 1859. The cathedral had three altars: in honor of the Life-Giving Trinity, the Protection of the Mother of God, and Saint Nicholas the Wonderworker.

In early 1919, the monastery was closed, and its buildings housed an orphanage, which existed until 1962. In 1936, the cathedral lost its crosses and four domes. Its premises were used for the second steam-powered electric station in the city, which operated from 1939. After Galich joined the state energy system in 1963, the station was closed, and a boiler room for the pedagogical college was set up in the cathedral building. During the Soviet era, the small domes of the cathedral were destroyed, and the building itself became buried under debris and dirt.

In the 1990s, restoration of the cathedral began, during which the small domes were restored, but the work was not completed, and the cathedral was not returned to the church. On February 8, 2017, contractors, representatives of the city administration, and clergy inspected the cathedral to discuss restoration work. Funding was provided under the "Historical Memory" project, overseen by Mikhail Kozlov, a member of the Federation Council from the Kostroma region.

On February 25, 2017, Bishop Alexiy Eliseev of Galich and Makaryev conducted a water blessing service for renewal and the start of restoration in the cathedral. By that time, construction scaffolding had been erected around the cathedral, and the dismantling of modern structures that hindered restoration had begun. The work was funded under the Federal Target Program "Culture of Russia, Historical Memory." In early May, after the heating season ended, the dismantling of the boiler room began, allowing contractors to continue finishing work and install ceilings. By the end of May, the dismantling was completed, and work inside the cathedral continued.

In June, gilding of the domes with titanium nitride began. By July 17, four small domes had been gilded, followed by the central dome. On July 31, "Galichskie Izvestia" noted that the cathedral, cleared of Soviet "growths" and raised from the ground, appeared huge and bright. On August 9, 2017, gilded crosses made in St. Petersburg were installed on the domes. After that, work began on arranging the interior space of the cathedral. Stains of oil, leftover from the Soviet times, appeared on the walls. By August 2018, the installation of window and door blocks made of larch was completed, and grilles were installed on the windows.