Chiesa del Santissimo Sudario dei Piemontesi

The origins are traced to 1270, when Piedmontese, Nicois and Savoyards returning from the Eighth Crusade formed a small community in Rome; in 1597 they founded the Confraternita del Santissimo Sudario. Under Sixtus V the archconfraternity obtained permission to build, and the church went up between 1603 and 1605 to a design by the Turin architect Carlo di Castellamonte, 1560 to 1641. Carlo Rainaldi restored it in 1678 and gave it the two-order facade, assisted by the Piedmontese painter-architect Pier Francesco Garoli. It was deconsecrated and used as a store and stables during the Roman Republic of 1798 to 1799, restored in 1856, and after 1870 served in effect as a private chapel of the House of Savoy. There is one nave with two side chapels and a polychrome stone floor; Cesare Maccari, 1840 to 1919, frescoed the vault. The high altar carries a seventeenth-century Pieta e santi by Antonio Gherardi and the left altar Il beato Amedeo IX by Giovanni Domenico Cerrini; a life-size sixteenth-century reproduction of the Shroud by Maria Francesca di Savoia was given by Clement VIII, and Lazzaro Baldi's Scene della Passione are in the sacristy.