The Church of the Virgin Pyrohoshcha (Pyrohoshcha) is one of the oldest sacred sites of Podil, with a history that dates back to 1132. The name likely derives either from the Byzantine icon Pyrgotissa (“the tower”) or from local merchants who traded in bread (pyrih) and were known as hoshchi. The church was probably originally wooden, and during the reigns of Princes Mstyslav and Yaropolk it was rebuilt in brick. Over the centuries, Pyrohoshcha served as an important religious and civic center: it housed a school, an orphanage, a hospital for the poor, the city archives, and was a venue for community gatherings. Between 1613 and 1633, the church temporarily served as the cathedral seat of the Orthodox Metropolitans of Kyiv.
Throughout different centuries the church underwent numerous reconstructions and restorations. In 1613, the Italian architect Sebastiano Bracci gave it Renaissance features and five domes. In the 1750s–1770s, Ivan Hryhorovych-Barsky built a bell tower in the style of Ukrainian Baroque. After a fire in 1809, the main dome collapsed, and Andriy Melensky restored it as a single-domed structure with Classicist elements. In 1835, the five-tiered bell tower was dismantled and replaced with a small Empire-style belfry.
Unfortunately, in 1935 the church was demolished by the Soviet authorities. Only in the 1970s did archaeological excavations uncover the foundations, confirming the age of the structure as more than 700 years. The church was rebuilt in 1997–1998 according to a design by Yurii Asieiev in Byzantine forms that recreated its 12th-century appearance. The new reconstruction sparked debate among historians and architects, as it did not replicate the Baroque or Classicist versions of its later reconstructions, for which photographs and plans have survived.