The Bayeux Tapestry will go on present on the British Museum in London subsequent yr after UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Emmanuel Macron of France agreed the historic mortgage. The show will mark the primary time the valuable tapestry, which depicts the 1066 Norman invasion and Battle of Hastings, has been in Britain in nearly 1,000 years.
The tapestry will go on present within the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery of the British Museum between September 2026 and July 2027. In return, Sutton Hoo treasures and the Lewis chessmen, a number of the British Museum’s most vital objects, can be loaned to establishments in France.
The cultural partnership and change have been introduced in the present day by Starmer and Macron, who’s at present on a State go to to the UK, a transfer extensively seen as re-setting UK-French relations following the tumultuous Brexit years. The mortgage will kind a part of a bilateral season of tradition in 2027.
In an announcement Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the British Museum, pressured how the brand new France-UK partnership displays his technique of working with different museums globally, primarily based on lending or exchanging objects. “That is precisely the sort of worldwide partnership that I would like us to champion and participate in: sharing one of the best of our assortment as extensively as doable and in return displaying international treasures by no means seen right here earlier than,” he mentioned.
Cullinan provides: “The Bayeux Tapestry is without doubt one of the most vital and distinctive cultural artefacts on the earth, which illustrates the deep ties between Britain and France and has fascinated individuals throughout geographies and generations. It’s exhausting to overstate the importance of this extraordinary alternative of displaying it on the British Museum.”
The tapestry deal has nonetheless been a number of years within the planning. In 2022 the British and French governments finalised a deal securing the mortgage of the historic embroidery to the UK. Britain has additionally tried, and failed, to borrow the work twice earlier than, in 1953 and 1966.
The Bayeux Tapestry is a Medieval embroidery, 70m lengthy and 50cm excessive. Created within the 1070s, the 9 panels with 58 scenes depict occasions main as much as the Norman Conquest of England after the Battle of Hastings in 1066. The tapestry was in all probability commissioned by Bishop Odo, the half-brother of William the Conqueror, the Duke of Normandy.
The tapestry has been on show in numerous areas in France all through its historical past and has been housed on the Bayeux Museum in Normandy since 1983. The museum is ready to shut for 2 years for renovation from September.
In 2021, considerations have been raised that the tapestry could also be too fragile to journey. Starmer informed Historical past Additional earlier this yr: “The conservation and safety of it’s clearly essential, and I do know that the Division for Tradition, Media and Sport continues to work carefully with their counterparts in France on the deliberate mortgage”.
