The Shroud's documented history begins not in Turin but in Lirey, France, in the 1350s, where it was displayed by the knight Geoffroi de Charny, and a local bishop soon reported the image as a painted forgery, a skepticism recorded within living memory of the cloth's first public appearance rather than invented by modern science. The House of Savoy acquired it in 1453 and kept it as a dynastic treasure for over a century, moving it between residences until it survived a serious chapel fire at Chambery in 1532, before Duke Emanuele Filiberto transferred it to the new Savoy capital of Turin in 1578, where it has remained since.
For over four centuries the Shroud stayed royal property, displayed at the House of Savoy's discretion for dynastic and religious occasions rather than through any church-controlled process. That changed only in 1983, when Umberto II, the last king of Italy, dying in exile, bequeathed the relic to the Holy See rather than to any surviving relative, transferring ownership from a royal family to the Catholic Church itself. The Archbishop of Turin has administered it as the Pope's custodian since, a genuinely modern change in legal ownership layered onto four centuries of continuous physical presence in the same city.