In 1501, the original parish church of San Matías was set up inside a small mosque known as "Gima Abrahem". However, when Emperor Charles V was honeymooning in Granada in 1526 after his marriage to Isabella of Portugal, he visited the church, which still occupied the old mosque, and found it poor and undignified. He therefore immediately ordered the construction of a new church which received the title of the "Imperial Church of Saint Matthew".

The church was built on a platform of ashlar blocks that raise it above the street of the same name, located in the historic centre of Granada and now the main thoroughfare of today's San Matías neighbourhood.

The designer of the church was Master Rodrigo Hernández. It consists of a single aisleless rectangular nave with pointed transverse arches. It has eight side chapels, and the high chapel is differentiated by height and covered by a polygonal timber framework. The arch leading into the high chapel preserves the arms of Charles V and of Archbishop Gaspar de Ávalos, under whose administration the church was begun.

On the exterior, the church has three portals, two of them fashioned in stone in the style of Siloé. The one opening onto Plaza Ábside de San Matías displays a fully Plateresque decorative repertoire with monstrous creatures, masks, putti or winged angels' heads, condelieri and, in particular, grotesques.

The five-storey tower rises on the line of the main façade, with decoration on twin windows that alternate brick with glazed ceramics.