
PATH
Organized as a permanent exhibition on 4 June 1936 at the initiative of the Confraternity of the Most Holy Shroud, the Shroud Museum was inaugurated in its new and current location, the crypt of the church of the Most Holy Shroud , in the presence of Cardinal Giovanni Saldarini , Archbishop of Turin, on 15 April 1998 .
The current exhibition offers complete information on sindonological research from the 16th century to the present day, capturing its historical, scientific, devotional and artistic aspects.
One wing of the Museum offers a scientific itinerary . Here the research on the Shroud and its mysteries is illustrated and documented, from the first photo taken by the lawyer Secondo Pia , in 1898 , to the astonishing three-dimensional image of the face of the Man of the Shroud created in 1978 by the team led by Giovanni Tamburelli .
The spectrum of studies is broad, with analyses on the tissue, on microtraces (pollen, blood, aloe, myrrh, aragonite...), and also with forensic and iconographic investigations.
The other section of the museum traces a historical path of the Shroud and its veneration starting from the second half of the 15th century , when the Sheet became the property of the House of Savoy.
Of particular note is the case used for the final transport of the Shroud to Turin in 1578.
The jewel of the museum is the sixteenth-century case in silver and semiprecious stones which conserved 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 .
The photographic section contains the entire series of official photographs of the Shroud , 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 Durante from 1997, 2000 and 2002 and the high definition digital photographs by Hal9000 from 2008 .
The visit is preceded by a video in five languages that welcomes visitors and offers an analytical reading of the Shroud image.
THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY SHROUD
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Since 2019, the church of the SS. Sudario has been part of the Museum's itinerary, which in 2018 was the subject of a complex restoration project by the "La Venaria Reale" Conservation and Restoration Center . It was originally built as an oratory between 1734 and 1735 , next to the Pazzerelli hospital , managed by the same Confraternity of the SS. Sudario and specifically to serve the mentally ill who assisted them. A true eighteenth-century architectural jewel , it was designed - with a single nave - by the engineer Ignazio Mazzoni , a brother of the Congregation of the Holy Sudario , who also had it built. The background of the church , on the side opposite the entrance, is painted with columns, statues and frames , depicting a small baroque temple. An ideal context for the frescoes of the vault , on which the restorations were concentrated: The Transfiguration, signed by the painter Michele Antonio Milocco and the architectural quadratures by Pietro Alzeri . A cycle of notable artistic interest which is accompanied by the Altarpiece , also the work of Milocco .
The opening to the public dates back to 1764 , again on the initiative of the Confraternity , which had the door built on the street to offer King Charles Emmanuel III the availability of its chaplains for religious assistance to the soldiers and their families , resident in the military quarters built at that time a few steps from the Church.
Deeply marked by the period of Napoleonic occupation and then by the two World Wars, the church was at the center of numerous and successive consolidation and restoration works throughout the 20th century. However, a complete and radical restoration work had to wait until 1996. The laborious project resulted in 1998 in the opening of the church crypt to the Shroud Museum, a unique exhibition center in the cultural panorama of our country. Beyond the Cathedral, where the Shroud is permanently preserved, but not visible , except during the rare periods of exhibition, this is in fact the place that more than any other offers the possibility of approaching the Holy Linen .