Is the Shroud real? Nobody knows. The image has not been explained by any known process. The cloth has been carbon-dated to the Middle Ages, and that date has been challenged but not overturned. The Church takes no position. This site takes none. See The Image, The Dating, The Church.
Is it a painting? The 1978 examination found no pigment, paint, dye or stain on the image fibers, no brush direction, and color on the surface fibers only. One microscopist, Walter McCrone, said it was a painting and never withdrew the claim. See The Image, The Case Against.
Is it a photograph? The image behaves like a photographic negative, which is why it looks lifelike only when photographed and reversed. That does not mean it was made with a camera. No silver or photographic chemistry has been detected, though the 1978 instruments could not have seen a very thin silver layer, and no fourteenth-century photographer is known. See The Image.
What does "three-dimensional" mean? The darkness of the image at any point tracks how far the cloth was from the body underneath. A machine that reads brightness as height draws the image as a relief of a human body. Ordinary photographs and paintings do not do this. See The Image.
Is the blood real blood? Chemically, yes: the stains contain hemoglobin breakdown products and serum. Whether it is human blood, and what type, is argued. See The Blood.
Did the carbon dating settle it? For most scientists, yes: 1260 to 1390. The sample's location and the statistics have been challenged in peer-reviewed journals, and the cloth has not been re-dated since 1988. See The Dating.
What happened in 1978? An American team of about two dozen scientists examined the cloth around the clock for about 120 hours in the Royal Palace of Turin with eighty crates of instruments, and in 1981 reported that they could not explain the image. See October 1978.
Were the scientists believers? Mixed. Several were, several were not, two were Jewish, and the chemist who led the sampling called himself a skeptic. The team's rule was that opinion did not count. See The People.
Has the Church ever said it is authentic? No. In 1998 John Paul II said the Church "has no specific competence to pronounce on these questions" and left them to scientists. The Church owns the cloth and calls it an icon. See The Church.
Has anyone been healed by it? The Church has never attributed a miracle to the Shroud. One documented case exists of a dying child brought to the cloth in 1955 whose illness then receded; she herself did not call it a cure. See Josie Woollam.
Where was it before 1355? Nobody can prove where. Proponents trace it to Edessa and Constantinople through a cloth called the Mandylion; most historians of Byzantium reject the identification. See Timeline, The Case Against.
What about the Sudarium of Oviedo? A bloodstained cloth in Spain, venerated as the face cloth of John 20:7, on record since 1075 and by tradition in Oviedo since the ninth century. Some researchers argue its stains match the Shroud's; the argument depends on the Shroud being authentic and is not accepted by skeptics. See Glossary.
Can I see it? Not at present. It lies in a sealed case in Turin Cathedral and has not been shown since 2015. The Museum of the Shroud in Turin shows its history. See Visit Turin.
Is the film accurate? The examination, the findings and the dates are from the record. The five scientists are composites, the sealed room and the chalkboard are the film's, and the press conference did not happen in Turin. The full list is on the Fact and Film page. See Fact and Film.
What does Sindon mean? Greek for fine linen. Mark's Gospel uses the word for the cloth Joseph of Arimathea bought. See Glossary.
Last checked 2026-10-20.