Orthodox Church in honor of the Great Martyr Demetrius of Thessalonica in Kharkov, built on Poltava Shlyakh Street, now house 44.

The wooden church in the name of the Great Martyr Demetrius was built in the middle of the 17th century in the then suburban settlement of Goncharovka beyond Lopan. Of its priests, Pyotr Fedorovich Vitinsky is known (he began serving no later than 1689, completed in 1731, having cut his hair as a monk and spending the last five years of his life in the Intercession Monastery), and his son Grigory Petrovich Vitinsky (since 1719. The 1724 and 1732 censuses testify about the existence at the arrival of a brotherhood with a “brotherly court” on Ktitorova Street.

In 1764, the dilapidated church was dismantled and a new one was erected in its place, also wooden and, apparently, similar to its predecessor. Judging by the image on the famous plan of 1787, it was made in the traditional forms of Ukrainian three-domed architecture with a low free-standing bell tower.
In the XVIII century. at the Dmitrievskaya church there was a cemetery (near the current intersection of Malinovsky and Karl Marx streets) for three Zalopan parishes - Dmitrievsky, Blagoveshchensky and Rozhdestvensky. The temple retained its significance as a cemetery church until the beginning of the 19th century, when the Kholodnaya Gora area was included in the city, where a new cemetery with the Church of All Saints was opened (in its place is now a stadium unfinished in the 1960s).
On November 19, 1804, the church, together with the parish archive, was destroyed in a fire. A small icon of the Smolensk Mother of God Hodegetria, which, according to the description, had been in the temple since the time of the first church in 1689, remained unharmed and was subsequently revered as a local shrine. The new stone temple, the construction of which, with the blessing of Bishop Christopher (Sulima), began on February 6, 1805, was designed by architects E. Vasiliev and P. Yaroslavsky in the Empire style, popular for that time, with a semicircular dome and a high sharp bell tower attached to the temple. Consecrated in 1808, the single-altar church was small in size, since the parish assigned to it did not differ in population at that time. An old iconostasis was brought from the Osnovyanskaya church, the temple was fenced from the street with a palisade, and on the other sides with wattle.

The writer G. F. Kvitka-Osnovyanenko lived in his mother's house opposite the temple, who supposedly got married and buried in this church.
Only in the early 1840s, with the need to expand the church, two chapels were added to it (in honor of the Smolensk Icon of the Mother of God, especially revered by the parishioners and in honor of St. Sergius of Radonezh), as well as a bell tower in a pseudo-Byzantine style, new for that time, from a distance similar on the minaret and giving the area an "oriental" flavor. The extensions made it possible to accommodate 800 people in the church. In 1872, a two-story stone house for the clergy (two deacons, a psalm reader and watchmen) was built on the church plot according to the project of D. L. Tkachenko. However, the population of the parish continued to grow. With the construction of the railway and the station, the settlement of the previously deserted area adjacent to them, the former suburb of Goncharovka became almost the center of the city. Dmitrievskaya Church again turned out to be cramped. Rector of the temple (since 1877) Fr. John Chizhevsky took the initiative of its further expansion and decoration, supported by parishioners, and in 1885-1896 the church underwent a major reconstruction according to the project of M. I. Lovtsov. The central nave was expanded, the side aisles and the bell tower were rebuilt. The temple, actively included in the panorama of the western part of the city, harmoniously combined elements of the Gothic, Byzantine and Old Ukrainian decor. Instead of the previous 800, it accommodated over 2,100 worshipers. Huge windows squeezed the abundance of light inside. A chapel and a parish school building were built on the sides. Bushes were planted along the fence from the side of the street, protecting the yard from street dust. Inside the fence there were tall trees and a pool of water, which was consecrated on the prescribed days.
The temple took care of the Alexander Hospital, adjacent to the north, for which Father John received gratitude from the Kharkov city government in 1894. Since 1896, there has been a parish brotherhood that takes care of the improvement of the church, the well-being of the clergy, the primary education of the children of the parishioners, and charity. In 1898, a school for girls was opened at the parish on the basis of city one-class schools, and in 1899, a hospital for the elderly. Charitable and social activities of Fr. Ioann Chizhevsky was awarded many awards including the Anninsky Star.
The temple was closed in February 1930 and transferred to the Avtodor club, later to the DOSAAF society. The clergy and active parishioners were repressed, several people were shot.
In 1935, the former church was rebuilt in the constructivist style, the domes and upper tiers of the bell tower were destroyed, and the interior space was blocked off. After the war, the building housed the Sport cinema. The side aisles, divided into two floors, occupied DOSAAF workshops, shops, the Vityaz cafe, and a doctor's office. In 1966, the facade of the church was covered with ceramic tiles, completely disfiguring the appearance of the building, and the temple paintings, which had been only hidden under a layer of whitewash, were destroyed.

On November 8, 1992, the first divine service of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was held in the still operating cinema. On December 20, the UAOC Patriarch Mstislav (Skrypnik) visited the temple, who blessed the resolutions to the hierodeacons of the headman of the community, monk Igor (Associate Professor of Kharkiv University Yuri Isichenko), later the rector of the temple, and then the diocesan bishop.

A year later, services become regular. There is a gradual transfer of premises to the church community, which lasted until August 11, 1999. However, the buildings of the former chapel and the parish school are still occupied by retail outlets.
The temple is the cathedral church of the Kharkiv-Poltava diocese of the UAOC, which currently operates as a separate religious organization. Under him, a theological seminary (“Collegium of Patriarch Mstislav”), a children's Sunday school, catechesis courses, a library, and an outpatient center were opened. The former headman of the parish, Yuriy Dontsov, developed two projects for the reconstruction of the temple - the minimum one, approved by the Kharkov Council of Architecture and Urban Planning in 1996, and the capital one in the Ukrainian style. However, neither the financial situation of the parish and the entire UAOC(o), nor the semi-emergency state of the building allow it to be implemented.