The monastery was founded in 1650 on the money of Poltava colonel Pushkar, Iskra, Kramarand other cossack chieftains and bourgeois of Poltava. It is located on the mountain which is named Monasterial since then, after the river Poltavka or Tarapunka, to north-east of the Poltava fortress.

The monastery was erected in honor of the victory of the Ukrainian cossacks over the Polish gentry. At first all the buildings were wooden. The first stone building - the cathedral church of the Exaltation of the Cross appeared few decades later. The general judge of the Cossack army Vasyl Kochubey gave money for it. 4-tiers belfry is the monument of late baroque. Its height is 47 meters. The bell tower had 10 ringings on it, most of them weighing 400 po¬ods. The monastery was devastated by Tatars and Russian empress Kateryna visited it. There was a headquarters of the Swedish king in 1709 there.

In the 18th century the monastery was a considerable cultural and educational center of Ukraine. Talented ikonwriters worked here. There was Slovyanska seminary, where Kotlyarevskiy, Martinov, Gnedich, Bodyanskiy, Makarovskiy, Yushnevskiy had studied. One of the first in the country hospitals worked here, one of the first refuges worked there too.

In the days of the Soviet power the monastery was closed twice (1923, 1960). In 1942 the woman monastery began its activity in the survivor apartments .
In the war-time monasterial apartments were blasted, including the main cathedral (rebuilt in 1956). On December, 19 1991 the Poltava woman monastery was opened.