AVVENIRE - Saturday,  August 10, 2002, page 7

The museum - The Sheet, after having  been survived  to the frightful fire of 1997 is now kept  in a special case.  And in order to  adequately protect the relic, they  adopted the most modern systems of preservation and alarm.
Technology to defend the Cloth

TURIN - It was of clear wood, studded with precious stones and enamels: set in the wood, they represented the instruments of the Lord's Passion:  nails, hammer, Christ's garments, the crown of thorns.
Now the case that for centuries had contained the Cloth is in the museum of the Shroud, a few blocks away from that Chapel that had kept it for three centuries.  A Chapel that is no more the same, too:  the frightful fire of April 11, 1997 let the external walls and the dome stand, but inside there is still all the desolation of the rubble and covering fragments. The restoration works are still far from being completed.  Since 1997 the Shroud has been kept "extended":  around it, it was necessary to employ the most advanced technologies, both for the monitoring of the control and alarm systems, and for the case itself:  a block of "virgin" aluminium, excavated without any welding, just to avoid any kind of contamination;  on the block is placed a crystal "cover". During last hundred years the worries about the preservation have kept up with the increasing interest that the Shroud excited in the scientific world:  from its first photography (1898), that revealed the fascination of the Face in its "negative-positive", around to the Cloth they carried out researches of any kind.  And the scientific acquisitions brought also to discoveries of great value, like the ascertainment that the stains, visible on the body of the Crucified in correspondence with the wounds at the hands, feet and side, are effectively of human blood; or like the researches on the pollens, that revealed the presence on the Shroud of botanical species localized in the Middle East two thousand years ago.
  The result of the radiocarbon test, carried out in order to establish the "age" of the Shroud, and that indicated for the Cloth a medieval dating, remains much debated and contested.

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