
WHO WE ARE
The Turin Shroud Museum, outside of periodic exhibitions, is the place permanently dedicated to the knowledge of the Shroud; it is kept in the Cathedral of Turin, under the royal tribune, but is not visible. At the Museum it is possible to approach it in depth from a scientific, historical, artistic, but also devotional point of view. In fact, the church of the SS Sudario is part of the museum itinerary, in which a wonderful copy of the Shroud is exhibited, in life-size, which represents it very close to its original appearance.
The Museum was founded in 1936 by the Confraternity of the Holy Shroud, at the behest of Cardinal Fossati, then Metropolitan Archbishop. The inauguration of the current headquarters, which extends under the crypt of the church of the Holy Shroud and in some small rooms, took place on 15 April 1998 with the presence of the then Archbishop of Turin, Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini.
A wing of the museum is dedicated to the scientific path that illustrates the evolution of research that began practically over a century ago, that is, in 1898, the year in which the first photograph of the Shroud was taken by the lawyer Secondo Pia. The scientific investigations, which are documented in the Museum, account for the numerous interdisciplinary efforts to read the Shroud and reveal some of its mysteries.
The other part of the museum (the historical path) traces the history – both hypothetical and certain – of the Shroud and its veneration starting from the second half of the 15th century, when the Cloth became the property of the House of Savoy. In this section, the case used to transport the Shroud to Turin in 1578 is extremely valuable. The jewel of the museum is the 16th-century case in silver and semiprecious stones that preserved the Shroud from the end of the 16th century until 11 April 1997, the day of the fire in the Guarini chapel in the Turin Cathedral where the Shroud was kept.
The entire series of official photographs of the Shroud is preserved in the room dedicated to photographic documentation, including the first photographs taken by Secondo Pia in 1898, those by Giuseppe Enrie from 1931, the first colour image by Giovanni Battista Judica Cordiglia from 1968, the scientific photographs by STURP from 1978, those by Gian Carlo Durante from 1997, 2000, 2002 and 2010 as well as the high definition digital photographs by the Hal9000 company from 2008.
The museum tour begins with the screening of a video in various languages that welcomes visitors and offers both an analytical reading of the Shroud image and some preliminary historical information.
