On a mild, sticky Sunday morning in springtime Turin, thousands of people mill around the city's Castle and Royal Palace. Children eating ice-creams, mothers with toddlers in their arms, and elderly people confined to wheelchairs all form an orderly queue as they stand in line, not for an open-air concert or a free visit to a municipal museum, but for a visit to the city's famous "Holy Shroud", better known worldwide as the "Turin Shroud".
A Sunday morning trot down the road to have a look at the shroud is not something that the average Torinese can take for granted. The celebrated relic is currently on show for only the fourth time this century and for the first time in 20 years. Furthermore, a visit is by pre-arranged telephonic appointment - you don't just turn up and walk in.
The visitors, ranging from devout pilgrims to the merely curious, gently amble along a 500yard walkway through the Royal Gardens at the back of Turin's Cathedral. At the beginning of the walkway, volunteer workers hand out leaflets which try to contextualise the shroud or, looked at another way, try to put manners on your Sunday morning sightseers:
"You have now come to the most important part of your pilgrimage. Just a few hundred yards separate you from the shroud. Spend these minutes well, in silence and in meditation."
Mirabile dictu, nearly all the visitors fall silent. The queue moves forward slowly, stopping every now and then as those at the head of the queue stop to watch a short film outlining the history and significance of the shroud.
Measuring 14 ft 3 ins in length and 3 ft 7 ins in width, the shroud is a now yellowing linen cloth said to depict the body of the crucified Christ and to have been used as a burial robe when he was laid in the tomb. Viewed in negative, via a camera image, the shroud reveals a man with long hair and a beard while the cloth seems to bear the marks of crucifixion, including the stigmata, marks from thorns on the head, bruises on the shoulders and severe cuts on the back.
All of this and much more is narrated by the short film which, inevitably, highlights the similarities between the Gospel accounts of Christ's crucifixion and the various marks on the shroud itself. The film leaves it there, not daring to state categorically that this is Christ's burial cloth but also omitting the results of a 1988 series of carbon-dating tests carried out in Oxford, Zurich, and Tucson, Arizona, which concluded that the shroud was a medieval fake, dating from between 1260 and 1390.
Nor does the film point out that the negative-image view of the man's face provides another major question mark, since the man in question appears to be in his mid-50s rather than aged 33.
From the film theatre, we move on to the cathedral itself. Volunteers at the door gesticulate frantically at anyone with a camera or home-movie video, making it clear they are not to be used inside the cathedral and definitely not to be pointed at the shroud.
This latter concern is not linked to photographic copyright but rather to the ideal conditions now deemed necessary for the preservation of the shroud. When not on display, the shroud has been traditionally wrapped up around a wooden pole and stored in a special glass and silver box behind the main altar in Turin's Cathedral. The shroud has been in Turin since being brought their by members of the House of Savoy in 1532.
Scientists and shroud experts now seem agreed that the best possible way to preserve the shroud is not to roll it up but rather to unfold it, stretching it out horizontally in a purpose-built, bullet-proof glass case filled with inert gas. Furthermore, it will henceforth be stored at a constant temperature, far removed from bright light. This latter condition explains the lack of enthusiasm for cameras and flashbulbs.
Despite all the warnings, however, when we finally get to stand in front of the shroud close to the main altar on a special sort of mini-grandstand, some people cannot resist. Pop, click, whirr and off go the flash-bulbs, these latter hardly providing an ideal response to the prayer that is read out as each group stops for its standard one- to two-minute look at the relic.
Fifty minutes after entering the walkway on the other side of the Royal Gardens, the visit is over. Between now and June 13th when the current showing of the shroud ends, more than two million people are expected to make this same visit.
On show now to mark both the 500th anniversary of the cathedral's foundation and the centenary of the first, all-revealing negative image of the relic, the shroud continues to generate debate and discussion and not just within the hallowed confines of Turin's International Centre of Shroud Studies or in the city's Shroud Museum.
The Catholic Church has never declared the shroud to be genuine but has always ruled that it is an acceptable object of veneration. That position was underlined by the Cardinal of Turin, Giovanni Soldini, at a recent special inaugural Mass and it will doubtless be reconfirmed by Pope John Paul II when he visits the shroud in 10 days.
The shroud is on show until June 14th and visits can be booked through the following: 00.39.11.4647999 (from Ireland) or 167.329329 (from Italy).