The Coronation Cathedral was built in 1921–1922 specifically to host the coronation of King Ferdinand I and Queen Marie of Romania, the first monarchs of the unified Greater Romania. It stands inside the Alba Carolina Citadel, just a few metres from the older Roman Catholic cathedral. The building is inspired by the Orthodox churches of Wallachia, with a Byzantine plan and exterior murals — a deliberate stylistic choice to root the new state in Romanian rather than Habsburg tradition.
The interior is richly decorated with frescoes and stained glass, and the tombs of Ferdinand and Marie are housed in a crypt beneath the nave. Marie's tomb is particularly notable — she was one of the most colourful royal figures of the interwar period, a granddaughter of both Queen Victoria and Tsar Alexander II, who reinvented herself as the architect of Romania's international recognition after the First World War.