England to Welcome Bayeux Tapestry Back After 900 Years
116July 10, 2025
TheBayeux Tapestry, a 230-foot embroidered cloth chronicling the 1066 Norman Conquest of England, is set to return to England next year, some nine centuries after it was made there. Believed to have been created in the eleventh century, the Romanesque-style masterpiece was likely commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, the half-brother of William the Conqueror, who rose to become the first king of England following the Norman invasion of the country and the Battle of Hastings, both of which are depicted in the tapestry. With a few interruptions, the medieval treasure since leaving England has been housed in the cathedral in Bayeux, France.
French president Emmanuel Macron in 2018 offered to loan the work to England, but conservators deemed the tapestry too fragile to be moved. Now, however, it will go on view at London’s British Museum, where it will be exhibited from September 2026 to July 2027. In return,the British Museumwill loan to museums in Normandy objects including the Lewis Chessmen, a group of chess pieces found on Scotland’s Isle of Lewis and dating to around the twelfth century, and the Sutton Hoo collection, comprising artifacts retrieved from an Anglo-Saxon burial ship.
“The Bayeux Tapestry is one of the most iconic pieces of art ever produced in the U.K. and I am delighted that we will be able to welcome it here,” Lisa Nandy, Britain’s culture secretary, said in a statement. “This loan is a symbol of our shared history with our friends in France, a relationship built over centuries and one that continues to endure.”
To museum watchers, the loan is significant because the British Museum has historically resisted repatriating antiquities residing in its own collection, for example stubbornly clinging to the so-called Elgin Marbles, whose return Greece has been clamoring after for decades.
“The fact that this loan has actually been brokered is just a monumental kind of collaborative effort in terms of sharing this cross-cultural legacy,” Andrew Saluti, an associate professor of museum studies at Syracuse University, told the New York Times. “The tides could be shifting.”