It is a modest structure with a circular nave of 6.5 metres internal diameter and walls 95 centimetres thick; on its eastern side it is joined by an apse of an unusual parabolic shape. The masonry is composed of small sandstone ashlar blocks. Following the Hussite sack of 1420, during which Vyšehrad was almost entirely destroyed, the rotunda survived as one of only two religious buildings on the site, albeit damaged and looted. In the centuries that followed it endured a remarkable series of fates: it served as a gunpowder store, a kitchen and a shelter for the poor, and in 1757 it was damaged by Prussian artillery — a cannonball bricked into its wall remains visible to this day. In 1841 the rotunda faced demolition to make way for a planned road from Nové Město to Pankrác; it is thanks to the intervention of Count Karel Chotek that it still stands.
In 1875 the Vyšehrad Chapter purchased it for 500 gulden, and between 1878 and 1880 it underwent restoration and re-Romanisation according to a design by architect Antonín Baum. The original western entrance was bricked up and a new Neo-Romanesque stone portal was created on the southern side, decorated with motifs from the Vyšehrad Coronation Codex and bearing the inscription Sancte Martine ora pro nobis — Saint Martin, pray for us. The interior was painted with biblical scenes; the Neo-Romanesque altar is made of Slivenec marble. The rotunda is not generally open to tourists, but it can be visited during regular services or as part of organised tours of the complex.