A segment of the Bayeux Tapestry, showing William the Conqueror in the center alongside his half-brothers Odo and Robert
After over nine hundred years, the Bayeux Tapestry will return to England as part of an exchange between the British and French governments.
The Bayeux Tapestry is a centuries-old document that depicts the events surrounding the Norman conquest of England in 1066. The English king, Edward the Confessor, died without an heir, leading to several claimants. William, Duke of Normandy, was the king’s first cousin and believed the English throne was rightfully his. However, the Witenagemot, the Anglo-Saxon council of the nobility, chose a new king from amongst themselves, elevating the Earl of Wessex, Harold Godwinson, to the throne. The Normans crossed the English Channel, invaded the country, and killed Harold in battle. The tapestry ends with the Norman victory at Hastings, but most people know what happened after. William would be crowned at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day of that year and would be forever known as William the Conqueror. Every king and queen of England, and later of Great Britain, is a direct descendant of his.
Confusingly, the Bayeux Tapestry is not a tapestry, nor was it made in Bayeux. It’s actually embroidery, and it was likely made in Kent in the southeast of England. It earned its name because it is kept at the Cathedral of Bayeux in Normandy. William’s half-brother Odo was Bishop of Bayeux and was likely the one who commissioned the tapestry’s creation. While it is an incredibly important artifact of both English and French history, for many centuries, the tapestry had only local significance. Every year, the bishop of Bayeux would unfurl the entire tapestry to decorate the cathedral for the Feast of Saint John the Baptist in June. It would not gain wider international recognition until it was exhibited at the Louvre in 1797. The first museum built to house and display the tapestry was established in 1913.
As part of a cultural exchange between the British and French governments, the Bayeux Tapestry will be lent to the British Museum to go on display between September 2025 and July 2027. Meanwhile, several artifacts from the British Museum, including artifacts from the Sutton Hoo burial mounds and the Isle of Lewis chess pieces, will be lent to French museums. The exchange was first proposed in 2017. However, with the global pandemic and two British prime ministers coming and going in the meantime, it has taken much longer than expected to get this arrangement off the ground. French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made the exchange agreement official at Windsor Castle on Tuesday. British Museum chairman George Osborne predicted that the tapestry’s exhibition “will be the blockbuster show of our generation”, similar to the contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb or when France sent the Mona Lisa around the world.
Some have commented that this sort of exchange involving incredibly famous and valuable artifacts may serve as a template for how the British Museum can let go of pieces with tainted provenances, such as the Parthenon Marbles. Organizations such as the Parthenon Project have suggested this sort of exchange in the past, proposing that the controversial sculptures taken from the Acropolis in Athens could be exchanged, even if temporarily, for any number of items that the Greek government could loan to the British Museum in turn.