La Sindone, or The Shroud of Turin

Although people in Turin (Torino in Italian) are not, understandably, celebrating the French National Holiday this 14th of July, we remember that one year ago, in Nice, tragedy struck. And thanks to our good luck, these attacks didn't happen two years ago, because we were in the exact place where the 2016 attack occurred.

I digress. After our last class today, we visited the Cathedral, or Duomo of Torino. It's one of the few Renaissance buildings in Torino. That's because Torino was a small, unimportant city until about the 1600s since the Savoys had been ruling from France. So the main architectural style is Baroque, or later, such as Classical Revival. I digress.

So, yes, the Sindone, or The Shroud of Turin, is in a Chapel (Capella Della Sindone) in the Duomo. The Shroud was the cloth used to wrap the body of Christ, and archeological research seems to point to the image of the body of Christ, showing, for example, where blood from the Crown of Thorns stained the cloth where an image of the face of Christ appears. The Shroud covered the whole body, so the cloth has an image of the whole body. Unfortunately, the Shroud is only on view about every 10 years; the last Exposition of the Shroud, granted by Pope Francis, was in 2015. The Shroud was first thought to have reached Edessa, present day Urfa, in Turkey, in 544. In 944, it was transferred to Constantinople. Long story short, it was placed in the Duomo in 1694.

The Shroud is in this this case in the Chapel of the Duomo