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While there is no hard evidence of the Shroud existing before the mid-1300s, a similar relic - which supporters believe was the same object - was reportedly stolen from a church in Constantinople a century before.

It bears the ghostly image of a man around six feet in height who bears wounds consistent with whipping and crucifixion. With the invention of photography at the end of the 19th Century, the shroud was photographed - revealing that the negative image was much more vivid than the faded "scorch mark" visible to the naked eye.

Over the years, a number of sceptics have attempted to recreate the centuries-old image, with mixed results. While the balance of probabilities lies with the object having been produced by an unidentified faker in the mid-1300s, whoever created it would have had remarkable, almost supernatural skill.

Various popes have endorsed the Turin Shroud as a miraculous relic, including Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis in 2013, but the Catholic Church as a whole has no official position on its authenticity.