This is the Catholic episcopal see of the diocese of Lérida.

The temple was built between 1761 and 1781 with donations from King Carlos III, financial contributions from the people of Lleida and also from Bishop Joaquín Sánchez. This was because the old cathedral, after the War of the Spanish Succession, had been requisitioned to be used as a fortress and military bastion.

It has a very refined Baroque style, influenced by French academicist classicism. It is located on the commercial axis of the city of Lérida and opposite the old Hospital of Santa Maria.

When the city was conquered by the soldiers of Philip V during the War of the Spanish Succession, the Bourbon troops turned the cathedral into military barracks and liturgical activity had to be transferred to the church of San Lorenzo. Under the reign of Ferdinand VI, attempts were made to recover the ecclesiastical functions of the old cathedral, but to no avail, and the bishopric was forced to build a new seat.

Charles III of Spain granted permission and part of the financing to build the new cathedral, on the condition that he abandoned his intention to recover the Seo Vieja as the bishop's see. It was first thought to be on the same site as the church of San Lorenzo, but the chapter was opposed. In the end, the site of the old granary was chosen, with a clear commitment to the axis of the lower part of the city.

The first stone of the new cathedral was laid by Bishop Manuel Macías Pedrejón on 15 April 1761. The new cathedral was planned by Pedro Martín Cermeño, a military architect, and the construction was directed and modified by the royal architect Francesco Sabatini, and others. It was consecrated in 1781 and completed in 1790.

It is a church with three naves of equal height, separated by pillars and buttresses between which are the side chapels, covered by vaulted roofs. The general layout, which is indebted to Catalan Gothic schemes, with a hall plan organisation, enhances the unitary space and establishes the continuation of the side naves in the ambulatory, arranging the outbuildings attached to it in two rectangular bodies that surround the apse and the apsidal ambulatory.

The elegant pillars that divide the naves are attached to four Corinthian pilasters with fluted shafts, and rise on high plinths crowned with a surmount like an architrave or frieze, on which the vaults rest. The composition of the façade has precedents in the Spanish-Portuguese tradition of the late Renaissance, being a clear example of classicist Baroque, very much in line with the eclecticism professed by engineers and military men.

The central body of the façade follows Roman Baroque patterns, impregnated with Palladianism. It has an open bay with three semicircular arches and an aedicule that tries to break the horizontality and at the same time emphasises the central bay. A simple balustrade crowns the whole. The three-storey towers on the sides repeat in their lower body the rhythmic motif of the paired pilasters that is repeated throughout the façade.

Reference must be made to the modifications that Cermeño's original project underwent. Some were imposed by the topography of the terrain, since although the ground was supposed to be level, in reality it had to be adjusted to the slope towards the façade. Cermeño had planned five steps, and in the end, in addition to the four in the atrium, another fifteen were needed on the main access staircase.

An intermediate section of the towers was also removed, leaving them much lower, and the attic of the main body of the façade was reduced and its design simplified. Another variation was to give the church a double roof, as the original idea was to have a roof terrace. Inside the church, the most visible modification is the conversion of the pillars and arches of the apse into a continuous wall on the presbytery side, while they remain attached to the ambulatory.

The church houses the image of the Virgin of Montserrat, the work of Josep Obiols, and also worships the Verge del Blau, which, according to legend, owes its name to the "blau" that the sculptor made on her forehead when he threw a hammer at her after seeing that during one of his trips, a disciple of his had finished the sculpture with greater success than he had.

The old choir, the work of Lluís Bonifás Massó, in the Baroque style, was destroyed during the Spanish Civil War.