Photo Depicting Milan Cathedral Covered by Diamonds Altered

Despite being one of Italy's most popular tourist locations, a picture of the Milan Cathedral was recently uploaded to a Facebook page. It shows how the architecture has been covered and made more brilliant by the use of diamonds and crystals. This picture received a lot of Khmer-speaking Facebook comments and shares. The aforementioned image, however, has been digitally altered, according to a Google Reverse Image search.

This is about our investigation of these photos.

Social Media Claim

On September 19, 2022, a Facebook page called Vivann Regan posted a photo of a cathedral shining with diamonds. This photo is claimed to be located in a city of Italy. The photo posted above has been shared many times by social media users, along with various expressions and reactions.

The following is captured from the Facebook page above that reads in Khmer or translates in English as “Symbol of the Famous City of Milan in Italy”.

Facebook Post | Archived Link

Fact Check

Fact Crescendo Cambodia started by using Google Reverse Image Search to verify the aforementioned images and statements, which allowed us to discover the following information.

Photos of the same format and shape were found on Unsplash, a website dedicated to proprietary stock photography. The same website above shows that the original photo is of a cathedral church in Milan, Italy and was uploaded to the website in 2018.

The picture below is captured from the website mentioned above, but it does not depict the angle of the cathedral covered with diamonds and shined by light.

Unsplash Link | Archived Link

Below is a comparison image between the edited photo and the original photo that are found on social media.

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You may find the details of this fact-check in Khmer language here as well.

Conclusion

Fact Crescendo Cambodia found that the photo posted above is digitally altered. This place is known as Milan Cathedral located in Milan, Italy. The diamond's shine is completely absent from the original photograph.