A linen cloth kept in the Chapel of the Holy Shroud in Turin Cathedral, bearing a faint front-and-back image of a naked man. The image reads far more clearly as a photographic negative than in its own sepia, which the photographer Secondo Pia found in 1898 and which is a large part of why the modern argument started. In 1988 three independent laboratories, Oxford, Arizona and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, radiocarbon dated the material to AD 1260 to 1390 with 95 percent confidence, placing it in the medieval period. The Catholic Church takes no position: it neither endorses nor rejects the shroud as a relic, and Pope Francis stopped short of asserting authenticity while encouraging people to contemplate it. It is shown rarely. Over two million people came to the 2010 display, with further showings in 2013 and 2015.
Turin Cathedral, Italy
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