Shroud of Turin

The linen cloth bearing the imprint of a crucified man, kept in Turin since 1578: a venerated relic, the subject of scientific study, and an occasion for expositions that draw millions of people.

Image from the publication of Turismo Torino e Provincia — From the publication of Turismo Torino e Provincia

The Shroud of Turin is a herringbone-woven linen cloth, about 4.41 meters long and 1.13 meters wide, bearing the double imprint, front and back, of a man showing the marks of flogging and crucifixion^[1]. Christian tradition venerates it as the burial cloth of Jesus. For more than four centuries it has been kept in Turin, in the Cathedral, and for the city it is at once a relic, a subject of scientific research and an event: its public expositions have brought millions of pilgrims to the city^[2].

From Lirey to Chambéry

The first reliable records place it in France: in 1353 the knight Geoffroy de Charny deposited it in the church he had founded at Lirey, in Champagne. Already in 1389-1390 Bishop Pierre d’Arcis wrote that the cloth had been made a few years earlier and that its author had confessed to having painted it. [12] At the start of the 15th century his descendant Marguerite de Charny carried it with her on her travels^[1], until, to keep it from the canons who were demanding its return, she ceded it to Duke Ludovico of Savoy, probably in 1453 in Geneva^[3]. From then on the cloth remained with the House of Savoy for more than five centuries.

At Chambéry, then the capital of the duchy, the relic was placed from 1506 in the castle chapel, and in the same year a bull of Pope Julius II fixed its liturgical feast on 4 May^[3]. On the night of 4 December 1532 a fire damaged the chapel: the relic was damaged, and it was the Poor Clares of the city who carried out the first repairs^[1].

The arrival in Turin

The move to Turin was decided by Emanuele Filiberto. The occasion was the pilgrimage of Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, who wished to venerate the relic^[1] and reached Turin on foot from Milan, in the rain and under conditions of harsh penance^[3]. The cloth arrived on 9 September 1578 at Lucento castle and then passed to the ducal chapel of San Lorenzo^[3], beside what is now the Royal Church of San Lorenzo.

To give it a permanent home the Savoys commissioned Guarino Guarini to build a chapel between the Cathedral and the Royal Palace; the relic was placed in 1694 on the great double-sided central altar designed by Antonio Bertola, where it remained until 1993^[4]. The Chapel of the Holy Shroud thus became the religious heart of the court, and for centuries its expositions accompanied the dynasty’s weddings, births and anniversaries.

Secondo Pia’s negative

In 1898, during the exposition held for the wedding of Prince Vittorio Emanuele, King Umberto I authorized a photograph for the first time. The task went to the Asti lawyer Secondo Pia, an amateur photographer and future mayor of Asti, who worked at his own expense with a camera built specially by the Turin cabinetmaker Giovanni Cordero for glass plates of 50 by 60 centimeters^[5]. The first attempt, on 25 May, failed because of irregular electric lighting; on 28 May the shot succeeded^[5]. Developing the plate, Pia found that the imprint, faint and blurred on the linen, became on the negative a sharp, legible positive image.

“I felt a very strong emotion when I first saw the Holy Face appear on the plate”
Secondo Pia, on the night of the development, 1898

The discovery opened the long modern debate over the nature of the image: for some it was a confirmation, for others grounds to suspect retouching, and Pia described himself merely as “the simple instrument, a very fortunate one, of a revelation that in any case would sooner or later have been made”^[5].

The 20th century: studies, television and the Savoy bequest

In the 20th century the expositions changed in scale. The one in May 1931 marked the wedding of Umberto of Savoy to Maria José; in 1969 the cloth was examined for three days at the Royal Palace and photographed in color for the first time; on 23 November 1973 it appeared live on television. In 1978, for the fourth centenary of its arrival in Turin, the solemn exposition was followed by 120 consecutive hours of examination conducted by 44 scholars from various countries^[2].

Umberto II, the last king, died in exile on 18 March 1983 and in his 1981 will left ownership of the cloth to the Holy See, which accepted it on 18 October 1983. On 14 November the Secretary of State, Agostino Casaroli, communicated the transfer to Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero, Archbishop of Turin, who was named pontifical custodian^[3], a role that still today belongs to the head of the archdiocese.

The radiocarbon dating

On 21 April 1988, in the sacristy of the Cathedral, a sample was taken from the lower edge of the cloth and divided among the laboratories of the University of Arizona, the University of Oxford and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. On 13 October Cardinal Anastasio Ballestrero, flanked by the scientific adviser Luigi Gonella, read out the verdict: “The calibrated date range assigned to the shroud’s fabric is between 1260 and 1390 AD”^[6]. The archbishop commented: “The Shroud may come and go, but Christ remains”^[6]. The result, which placed the linen in the Middle Ages, has since been at the center of disputes over the sampling method and of fresh analyses. In 2025 the historian Nicolas Sarzeaud pointed to a treatise by Nicole Oresme from around 1370 that already suspected a fraud, and a study published in Archaeometry argued that the image is more consistent with a painting or a bas-relief than with a body. [12] According to Treccani, no experimental study has since cast doubt on the reliability of the result. [14]

The fire of 1997

On the night between 11 and 12 April 1997 a fire devastated Guarini’s chapel. The Shroud was not on the Baroque altar: it had been removed in 1993, when restoration work on the chapel began^[1]. The firefighter Mario Trematore, who was off duty, was alerted by his wife, who had seen the column of smoke from their balcony, and rushed to help his colleagues; together they broke the bulletproof case with a five-kilogram sledgehammer and carried the cloth out through the flames. “I felt I had a strength that was not human,” he recounted years later^[7]. The wooden case saved that night is now in the Museum of the Shroud. [15]

In 2002 a conservation restoration removed the burnt strips of fabric and the patches sewn on by the Poor Clares, and the cloth was subjected to new examinations; today it is kept lying flat, in a sealed case filled with inert gas, with multi-layer safety glass and fire protection^[1]. Guarini’s chapel reopened to the public only on 27 September 2018^[4], after twenty-one years of works and about 30 million euros spent, financed by the Ministry of Cultural Heritage with support from, among others, the Compagnia di San Paolo and the La Stampa - Specchio dei Tempi foundation; the relic, however, has not returned there and remains in the Cathedral^[8]. The cloth is kept in the last chapel of the left nave, beneath the Royal Tribune. [16]

The recent expositions

The expositions have become the city’s largest mass events. In 1998 about 2.4 million people filed past the cloth over 57 days, with a visit from John Paul II on 24 May; in 2000, the Jubilee year, the exposition lasted 72 days, and in 2010 there were more than 2.5 million pilgrims, among them Benedict XVI^[2]. The 2015 exposition, from 19 April to 24 June under the motto “The Greatest Love,” was granted for the bicentenary of the birth of Don Bosco^[9] and drew more than two million visitors from 146 countries^[10].

In the 2025 Jubilee there was no traditional public exposition: from 28 April to 5 May, in piazza Castello, a “tent” allowed visitors to digitally explore a life-size image of the cloth, enlarging the face and the marks of the Passion. Cardinal Roberto Repole, archbishop and custodian, presented it as a way of approaching the Shroud through new technology^[11].

The Museum of the Shroud, founded in 1936 by the Confraternity of the Holy Shroud, has been housed since 1998 in the crypt of the Church of the Holy Shroud. [13]

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