In 57 days, from april 18 to june 14 two million and 400 thousand people entered the Cathedral of Turin to view the Holy Shroud. Most of them came from Piedmont, Lombardy and other italian regions but many visitors (nearly 65,000) travelled for thousands of kilometers to see the Linen: pilgrims from Asia, from central and south America and even from Oceania.
This was the first internet era exposition. The contacts counted on the official site, a web space with hundreds of images and texts translated in four languages, were more than 100,000, but the role of multimedia technologies was crucial also to enrich the approaching route to the Shroud along which, among other things, big screens in the prelecture rooms projected high definition videos of the june 25, 1997 private exposition to show visitors the signs on the Linen. Moreover, thanks to a camera inside the Cathedral and through the web, it was possible to follow the main moments of Pope John Paul II visit occurred on may 24, 1998.
It has been estimated that, on that day, 450,000 people have seen the Pope in front of the Cathedral, along the path to piazza Vittorio Veneto and in that same place where the Mass was celebrated. Pope John Paul II had already venerated the Shroud in a private exposition during his first visit to Turin on april 13, 1980.