For the first time in its 960-year history, the Bayeux Tapestry is outside France, and King Charles joined French President Emmanuel Macron to officially open the British Museum’s newest exhibition earlier this week.
The Bayeux Tapestry depicts 58 embroidered scenes that tell the story of the Battle of Hastings, which took place in 1066, when William the Conqueror defeated Harold, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, and became the first king in an unbroken line that leads to King Charles III.
First floated by President Macron years ago, the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry is the first time it has left French soil since its creation in the years following the Battle of Hastings. The process gained speed following successive state visits by King Charles and President Macron to each other’s respective country, and the loan was officially announced last year.
On Wednesday, President Macron and First Lady Brigitte Macron travelled to London to join King Charles and Queen Camilla for the British Museum’s official opening of its exhibition, an ‘entente amicale’ as President Macron called it on social media.
The royal couple and the French presidential couple gave speeches at the British Museum, with King Charles expressing his delight that the cloth is on British soil. The King said: “The Bayeux Tapestry tells a story familiar to most people in this country: the events of 1066, the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest — a moment that changed the course of these islands forever. It also tells the story of the beginning of what I like to think of as the French side of my Family’s history in these islands.”
Legend states that Queen Mathilda commissioned the tapestry for her husband, William I, but others maintain that William’s half-brother Odo commissioned it.
The King continued, joking that although he is the undisputed direct heir of William the Conqueror, “I am informed that the 13th Century Treaty of Paris may sadly affect any claims to be the current duc de Normandie!”
Weaving in his own connections through the Bayeux Tapestry to modern day UK-French relations, the King added, “These seventy metres of memory and artistry remind us, therefore, that our two Nations have been bound together for almost a millennium. The moments depicted in the Tapestry echo into our own days… It was then, and remains now, a commonplace truth that neither of us can fully tell our own story without the other.”
In his own speech, President Macron praised the UK and France for their strong, shared history and said that he hoped the two countries could “forge a bond as close as the threads of this thousand-year-old embroidery.”
The Bayeux Tapestry is on display at the British Museum through July 2027. Tickets for the first four months of the exhibit sold out within 24 hours; a second batch of ticket dates will be available for purchase in late October.
