The monastery is believed to have been founded in the 1320s by Saint Peter of Moscow, the first Russian metropolitan to move his see in Moscow. The cloister gave its name to adjacent Petrovka Street, one of the streets radiating from Red Square. The monastery cathedral, dedicated to St Peter of Moscow, was long regarded as a typical monument of the Naryshkin style and dated to 1692. In the 1970s the detailed studies of sources and excavations of the site revealed that the cathedral had been actually built in 1514-1517 by Aloisio the New.