LONDON (AP) — The Bayeux Tapestry, the Eleventh-century paintings depicting the Norman conquest of England, can be displayed within the U.Ok. for the primary time in nearly 1,000 years.
Officers stated Tuesday that the treasured medieval tapestry can be on mortgage from France and arrive subsequent 12 months on the British Museum, the place it’s going to star in a blockbuster exhibition from September 2026 to July 2027.
The mortgage was introduced throughout French President Emmanuel Macron’s state go to to the U.Ok.
The delicate 70-meter (230-foot) fabric depicts the occasions main as much as the conquest of England by William the Conqueror in 1066. The paintings was believed to have been commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux and has been displayed in numerous areas throughout France, together with most lately on the Bayeux Museum in Normandy.
“The Bayeux Tapestry is among the most iconic items of artwork ever produced within the U.Ok. and I’m delighted that we can welcome it right here in 2026,” Tradition Secretary Lisa Nandy stated in an announcement.
“This mortgage is an emblem of our shared historical past with our associates in France, a relationship constructed over centuries and one which continues to endure,” she added.
In return, the British Museum will mortgage treasures from the Sutton Hoo assortment — artifacts from a seventh century Anglo Saxon ship burial — to museums in Normandy. The excavation of Sutton Hoo was dramatized within the 2021 movie “The Dig” starring Ralph Fiennes and Carey Mulligan.
Different objects to be loaned to France embody the Lewis Chessmen, the mysterious medieval chess items carved from walrus tusks and whales’ enamel courting from across the twelfth century that have been found on the Isle of Lewis in Scotland.
