With the Bayeux Tapestry that tells of their long rivalry, France and Britain are making nice

Independent

11 hours ago

For centuries, the storytelling masterpiece has been a source of wonder and fascination. In vivid and gruesome detail, the 70-meter (230-foot) embroidered cloth recounts how a fierce duke from France conquered England in 1066, reshaping British and European history.
The Bayeux Tapestry, with its scenes of sword-wielding knights in ferocious combat and King Harold of England's famous death, pierced by an arrow to an eye, has since the 11th century served as a sobering parable of military might, vengeance, betrayal and the complexity of Anglo-French relations, long seeped with blood and rivalry but also affection and cooperation.
Now, the medieval forerunner of today's comic strips, commissioned as propaganda for the Normandy duke William known as 'the Conqueror' after he took the English throne from Harold, is being readied for a new narrative mission.
A homecoming for the tapestry
Next year, the fragile artistic and historic treasure will be gingerly transported from its museum in Bayeux, Normandy, to star in a blockbuster exhibition in London's British Museum, from September 2026 to July 2027.
Its first U.K. outing in almost 1,000 years will testify to the warming latest chapter in ties across the English Channel that chilled with the U.K.'s acrimonous departure from the European Union in 2020. The loan was announced in July when French President Emmanuel Macron became the first EU head of state to pay a state visit to the U.K. since Brexit.
Bayeux Museum curator Antoine Verney says the cross-Channel trip will be a home-coming of sorts for the tapestry, because historians widely believe that it was embroidered in England, using woolen threads on linen canvas, and because William's victory at the Battle of Hastings was such a major juncture in English history, seared into the U.K.'s collective consciousness.
'For the British, the date — the only date — that all of them know is 1066,' Verney said in an interview with The Associated Press.
A trip not without risks
Moving an artwork so unwieldy — made from nine pieces of linen fabric stitched together and showing 626 characters, 37 buildings, 41 ships and 202 horses and mules in a total of 58 scenes — is further complicated by its great age and the wear-and-tear of time.
'There is always a risk. The goal is for those risks to be as carefully calculated as possible,' said Verney, the curator.
Believed to have been commissioned by Bishop Odo, William the Conqueror's half-brother, to decorate a new cathedral in Bayeux in 1077, the treasure is thought to have remained there, mostly stored in a wooden chest and almost unknown, for seven centuries, surviving the French Revolution, fires and other perils.
Since then, only twice is the embroidery known to have been exhibited outside of the Normandy city: Napoleon Bonaparte had it shown off in Paris' Louvre Museum from late 1803 to early 1804. During World War II, it was displayed again in the Louvre in late 1944, after Allied forces that had landed in Normandy on D-Day, June 6th, of that year had fought onward to Paris and liberated it.
The work, seen by more than 15 million visitors in its Bayeux museum since 1983, 'has the unique characteristic of being both monumental and very fragile,' Verney said. 'The textile fibers are 900 years old. So they have naturally degraded simply due to age. But at the same time, this is a work that has already traveled extensively and been handled a great deal.'
A renovated museum
During the treasure's stay in the U.K., its museum in Bayeux will be getting a major facelift costing tens of millions of euros (dollars). The doors will close to visitors from Sept. 1 this year, with reopening planned for October 2027, when the embroidery will be re-housed in a new building, encased on an inclined 70-meter long table that Verney said will totally transform the viewing experience.
How, exactly, the treasure will be transported to the U.K. isn't yet clear.
'The studies required to allow its transfer to London and its exhibition at the British Museum are not finished, are under discussion, and are being carried out between the two governments,' Verney said.
But he expressed confidence that it will be in safe hands.
'How can one imagine, in my view, that the British Museum would risk damaging, through the exhibition, this work that is a major element of a shared heritage?' he asked. 'I don't believe that the British could take risks that would endanger this major element of art history and of world heritage.'
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