According to the chronicle of St. Petersburg, the first Buddhists appeared in these Northern climes during the construction of the first buildings of St. Petersburg - Peter and Paul fortress. These were the subjects of the Kalmyk khanate, then still a part of Russia, Volga Kalmyks, who worked on the construction of the stone ramparts of a fortress. But later, in the records of XVIII — middle of XIX centuries, there is no indication that the city had any representatives of Buddhist denominations. Only in the late XIX century in St. Petersburg began to be organized Buddhist community. According to the census of 1897, the population was 75 Buddhists, and in 1910 they numbered almost 200. These were mainly the Volga-don Kalmyks and Transbaikal Buryats.

Permission to build a Buddhist temple was given by Emperor Nicholas II at the request of the messenger of the XIII Dalai Lama scholar of the Buryat Lama Agvan of Lobana Dorzhiev. This Cathedral was built in a quiet, secluded place on the Bank of the Bolshaya Nevka river, from 1909 to 1915. at the same time there was built a dormitory for the monks and visiting Buddhists and service wing, which has not survived to our days. The project of the temple designed by the architect Baranovsky and a student of the Institute of civil engineers Berezovsky, who used the work of the medieval Tibetan architecture by some of Europeanization and modernization. Financed the building of the XIII Dalai Lama, Dorieboykins, Baggageman VIII and believers of Buryatia and Kalmykia.

The building is a narrowing upward parallelogram. From the South on the main facade of the temple has a beautiful portico of four columns of square section topped with an intricate pattern bronze capitals. It can climb on a wide granite staircase.

Red-purple granite was chosen for the walls of the temple. The upper part of the structure made of red brick, trimmed with blue belts in combination with white circles. From the North three-storey building of the temple is in contact with the four-storey tower, which is crowned with a gold-plated copper end, "gangaram". Even the temple is decorated with the symbol of Buddhism - vosmigrannymi circle "hard" with copper figures of gazelles on the sides. On the corners of the main facade is placed a gilded cones, in which are printed the prayer texts. Inside the temple are decorated with colorful stained glass ceiling and barriers with the Buddhist symbols is the only light of this premise, multi-colored tile floor is laid.

This temple was conceived not only as a chapel for the Buddhists of St. Petersburg, but also as a kind of Museum and a centre of Indo-Tibetan spirituality and culture in the European part of Russia. And now it is also the center of Buddhist studies — "monastic school".