LONDON (AP) — After a wait of almost 1,000 years and a journey of hundreds of miles, the Bayeux Tapestry ‘s big moment is here.
The embroidered panorama depicting the last successful invasion of England goes on public display at the British Museum this week, back on British soil for the first time since the 11th century.
Tickets are sold out for months, and the museum expects 1 million visitors to see the tapestry before the exhibition ends in July 2027. Schoolchildren across the U.K. will get special history lessons on it. King Charles III and French President Emmanuel Macron have already had a private viewing.
It’s an extraordinary level of excitement for what Prime Minister Andy Burnham jokingly called a 70-meter (230-foot) “reminder of one of Britain’s biggest defeats.”
It’s a story with a political message
Like a medieval comic strip, the tapestry tells a vivid tale of betrayal, bloodshed, suffering and conquest, depicting a pivotal moment in European history: the Norman conquest of England in 1066.
It illustrates events leading up to the Battle of Hastings, when William, Duke of Normandy defeated King Harold’s Anglo-Saxon army. The invasion made William the first Norman king of England, brought the French language and French settlers to England and forever intertwined the two countries’ fates.
Exhibition curator Michael Lewis said at a preview Monday that “1066 is the most important event in English history,” and there is a “propaganda element” stitched into the tapestry.
He said it was designed to tell English people that “Harold was king, you probably weren’t crazy to follow him, but the status quo has completely changed now. William is king and you need to kind of accept the new reality.”
It’s more than just medieval propaganda
The tapestry’s 58 scenes begins with English nobleman Harold Godwinson traveling to France, where he swears an oath to William, perhaps agreeing to back the duke’s succession to the English throne. But when English ruler Edward the Confessor dies, Harold is crowned king, leading William to assemble a fleet and set sail for England.
The final sections depict the climactic battle: archers with longbows, charging cavalry, sword-wielding knights, hand-to-hand combat and mutilated bodies.
Brutal violence sits alongside domestic detail. Soldiers steal livestock, cook dinner, eat using their shields as plates, burn down an English house as a woman and child flee. People steal from the bodies of the dead.
Margins at the top and bottom of the fabric brim with people, fish, dogs and winged beasts, sometimes acting as ironic commentary on the main action.
It remains remarkably vivid, and would have been even more powerful for its 11th-century viewers, Lewis said.
“Maybe they would even have tried to pick out themselves in the story of these events,” he said.
For historians, the tapestry is an invaluable source of insight into 11th-century life: shipbuilding, fashion, cuisine, architecture, armor, even astronomy. At one point Halley’s comet streaks across the sky, as it really did in 1066.
Scholars still debate its mysteries. Was the arrow that hits Harold in the eye, killing him, a later addition? A final scene, possibly depicting William’s coronation, is missing. Historians even argue about the exact number of equine and human penises on display — either 93 or 94.
Leonie Hicks, professor of medieval studies at Canterbury Christ Church University, says one reason the tapestry remains so famous is because its vivid, childlike illustrations are “very meme-able.”
“It can be used to comment on current politics or mark memorable events,” Hicks wrote in a blogpost, noting a recent magazine cover that showed Burnham on horseback advancing on his predecessor Keir Starmer, depicted as Harold with an arrow in his eye.
“The margins contained Big Ben and Larry the cat,” she said.
Hailed as symbol of friendship between Britain and France
The tapestry was likely commissioned by William’s half brother Bishop Odo of Bayeux and has spent almost 1,000 years in the French town. But historians believe it was probably stitched by women in southeast England, not far from the site of the battle. The king noted at a reception with Macron last week that it might just as accurately be called the Canterbury Embroidery.
Governments on both sides of the Channel have hailed its loan as a symbol of a Franco-British friendship. But getting it to London took years of diplomacy. After decades of failed British requests to borrow the tapestry, an agreement was announced in 2018, delayed by COVID-19 and Brexit tensions, and finally confirmed by Macron during a state visit to the U.K. last year.
Some French cultural figures, and the late British artist David Hockney, opposed the move because of the risk of damage to the fragile artifact.
Insured for 960 million euros ($1.1 billion), the tapestry was nestled inside climate-controlled shockproof packaging before being transported by road and rail to the museum under police escort, arriving in the dead of night. It’s being displayed flat, in what curators say is a robust state-of-the-art case, rather than hanging as it was in Bayeux.
Lewis said the “phenomenal expertise” of teams in both France and Britain had allowed it to arrive unscathed.
“It has to make that trip back as well,” he said. “But we’ve learnt so much in that process. I’m confident that we’ve learned a lot that helps us be sure that going back is going to be as good.”
