BAYEUX, France (AP) — For hundreds of years, the storytelling masterpiece has been a supply of marvel and fascination. In vivid and grotesque element, the 70-meter (230-foot) embroidered material recounts how a fierce duke from France conquered England in 1066, reshaping British and European historical past.
The Bayeux Tapestry, with its scenes of sword-wielding knights in ferocious fight and King Harold of England’s well-known demise, pierced by an arrow to a watch, has because the eleventh century served as a sobering parable of navy may, vengeance, betrayal and the complexity of Anglo-French relations, lengthy seeped with blood and rivalry but in addition affection and cooperation.
Now, the medieval forerunner of immediately’s comedian strips, commissioned as propaganda for the Normandy duke William often known as “the Conqueror” after he took the English throne from Harold, is being readied for a brand new narrative mission.
A homecoming for the tapestry
Subsequent yr, the delicate creative and historic treasure might 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.Okay. outing in virtually 1,000 years will testify to the warming newest chapter in ties throughout the English Channel that chilled with the U.Okay.’s acrimonous departure from the European Union in 2020. The mortgage was introduced in July when French President Emmanuel Macron turned the primary EU head of state to pay a state go to to the U.Okay. since Brexit.
Bayeux Museum curator Antoine Verney says the cross-Channel journey might be a home-coming of types for the tapestry, as a result of historians extensively consider that it was embroidered in England, utilizing woolen threads on linen canvas, and since William’s victory on the Battle of Hastings was such a significant juncture in English historical past, seared into the U.Okay.’s collective consciousness.
“For the British, the date — the only date — that all of them know is 1066,” Verney stated in an interview with The Related Press.
A visit not with out dangers
Shifting an art work so unwieldy — made out of 9 items of linen material stitched collectively and displaying 626 characters, 37 buildings, 41 ships and 202 horses and mules in a complete of 58 scenes — is additional sophisticated by its nice 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,” stated Verney, the curator.
Believed to have been commissioned by Bishop Odo, William the Conqueror’s half-brother, to embellish a brand new cathedral in Bayeux in 1077, the treasure is assumed to have remained there, principally saved in a picket chest and virtually unknown, for seven centuries, surviving the French Revolution, fires and different perils.
Since then, solely twice is the embroidery recognized to have been exhibited exterior of the Normandy metropolis: Napoleon Bonaparte had it proven off in Paris’ Louvre Museum from late 1803 to early 1804. Throughout World Conflict II, it was displayed once more within the Louvre in late 1944, after Allied forces that had landed in Normandy on D-Day, June sixth, of that yr had fought onward to Paris and liberated it.
The work, seen by greater than 15 million guests in its Bayeux museum since 1983, “has the unique characteristic of being both monumental and very fragile,” Verney stated. “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
Throughout the treasure’s keep within the U.Okay., its museum in Bayeux might be getting a significant facelift costing tens of tens of millions of euros ({dollars}). The doorways will near guests from Sept. 1 this yr, with reopening deliberate for October 2027, when the embroidery might be re-housed in a brand new constructing, encased on an inclined 70-meter lengthy desk that Verney stated will completely rework the viewing expertise.
How, precisely, the treasure might be transported to the U.Okay. is not but 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 stated.
However he expressed confidence that will probably be in secure fingers.
“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 requested. “I don’t believe that the British could take risks that would endanger this major element of art history and of world heritage.”
___
Leicester reported from Paris.
