Our main
purpose of coming to Turin was not to see the pope (see yesterday’s post), but
to see the Shroud of Turin. As you might know, this was the cloth supposedly used to
cover Jesus when he was taken down from the cross, although the church has not
definitively made up its mind about it. It has a colorful history of its own,
which you can read all about in Wikipedia. Like many, I’m fascinated by this
cloth. I've been fascinated by it ever since I read about it, many years ago, in Holger Kersten's book 'Jesus Lived in India'. I’d
been longing to see it a long time. The trouble is, it is kept hidden from
public view in the Cathedral of Turin (Duomo Di Torino). Luckily, it is shown
to the public for a few weeks once every five years, and 2016 was one of those
years.
The way you
see the shroud is that you reserve a slot on the Shroud of Turin Website. Then
you pop over to Turin on the appointed day and head for the Cathedral of St.
John the Baptist (Cattedrale di San Giovanni Battista), where it is kept on
display.
This is the
cathedral.
This is the
nice man at the gate who tells you the entry for viewing the shroud is not
here, but at the back.
This is the
back of the cathedral, actually, the Palazzo Reale…
You cross
the courtyard of the palace and go through this long passage…
You enter
the royal gardens, where there is a circus of tents…
You see a
purple army, the order of the shroud. They were set up in the 17th
century to defend the shroud with their lives, if necessary. Now they just
rally around to make sure the exhibitions go off smoothly.
You join an
endless queue that does eventually end. You enter what looks like the security
area of an airport with a long line of x-ray scanners and steely-eyed policemen.
You enter into a canvas passageway that goes on and on forever.
When you
have given up all hope of seeing the outside world again, you enter a darkened
cathedral – actually, the back of the one you had seen earlier. You suspect the order of the shroud takes you
on a merry hike up and down the royal garden path to heighten the sense of suspense.
Here at
last, suspended in a lighted box in a dark hall, the shroud. In the background, you hear the prayer of the
shroud being recited in Italian. At the entry, you have seen large, scary
posters saying ‘No photography’ in 3 languages, so you keep your iPad in the
rucksack. But you see everyone pulling out their mobiles and taking snaps. So
you gather courage and do it too…
No one
kills you. You gather some more courage and shoot a video too…
Your five
minutes with the shroud are over, you are shoved out. You take the chance to
shoot some of the statues in the alcoves of the darkened cathedral…
You come
out in the sunlight feeling… disappointed. The shroud looks a bit like the
reproduction you had seen the previous day in the Museum of the Shroud.
Actually, it looks like a bad reproduction of the reproduction.
Jokes
apart, the Museum of the Shroud, not far from the cathedral, is well worth a
visit and the cost of the entry fee. You get all kinds of interesting
scientific information and get to see relics associated with the shroud, such
as the casket in which it was stored in the 17th century. And there is a full sized replica of the
shroud that you can examine up close, unlike the real shroud.
Right
behind the museum is the church of … This was where the Shroud was stored in
the previous century before it came to its present location. It too has a
replica of the shroud.
