Built on the site of a Romanesque church, the church was the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Esztergom between 1543 and 1820. In the Baroque chapel, a copy of the icon of the Virgin Mary in the Church of St Boniface and St Alexis in Rome is considered miraculous. On two occasions, tears and blood are said to have flowed down the Virgin's face, while in 1710, after a procession through the streets of the city, an epidemic was reputedly stopped.