French Official Rules That 1,000-Year-Old Bayeux Tapestry Isn’t Too Fragile to Travel to London
The 230-foot-long medieval tapestry is scheduled to go on view at the British Museum next year, but critics worry that transporting the delicate artifact is too risky
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Despite concerns from scholars, a French official has ruled that a 1,000-year-old medieval tapestry is not too fragile to travel. The Bayeux Tapestry is set to be transported to the British Museum next year as planned.
Dating to the 11th century, the nearly 230-foot-long Bayeux Tapestry depicts William the Conqueror’s victory in the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It is widely thought to have been made in England just years after the battle, though it’s spent most of the time since then in France. It’s currently on display at the Bayeux Museum in Normandy.
In July, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the tapestry would travel to London’s British Museum, where it would be on display between September 2026 and July 2027. The announcement came seven years after Macron first announced plans for such a loan in 2018.
Quick fact: The many attempts to loan out the Bayeux Tapestry
British officials have been trying to secure a loan since 1953, when the idea was raised ahead of Elizabeth II’s coronation.
“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 last month, per the New York Times’ Jonathan Wolfe and Sopan Deb. “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.”
However, not everyone was so enthusiastic about the arrangement.
Shortly after the loan was announced, French art historian and journalist Didier Rykner launched an online petition protesting the loan, citing concerns that the move would damage the tapestry. The appeal has more than 58,000 signatures as of this writing.
Macron has appointed Philippe Bélaval, a high-ranking French official who oversees national monuments, as his envoy for the tapestry’s loan. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Bélaval says that no decision has been made yet about how the tapestry will be transported, but he cites a study from early 2025, which he says made detailed recommendations for the loan.
“This study absolutely does not state that this tapestry is untransportable,” Bélaval says, per AFP. He has not revealed the authors of the study nor their conclusions.
Back in 2022, Normandy cultural authorities commissioned three experts to conduct a feasibility study for transporting the tapestry to London. The study’s findings, per AFP, remain “confidential” at the request of authorities.
Other experts have publicly expressed concerns. Cécile Binet, a regional museum advisor for Normandy, said in February that the Bayeux Tapestry was “too fragile” to travel and that a long journey would pose “a risk to its conservation,” according to AFP.
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Isabelle Attard, who directed the Bayeux Museum from 2005 to 2010, tells the Art Newspaper’s Claudia Barbieri Childs that “the tapestry must not be transported.”
“Its value is incalculable, and if anything happens to it, no amount of money and no other similar object can replace it,” Attard says. “It’s [also] extremely fragile because of its age, past movements over the centuries, the way it has been subjected to almost nonstop lighting since its return to Bayeux after World War II, and the way it’s currently presented, sewn to a textile support hung from a rail on little roller bearings, creating tensions everywhere.”
The tapestry museum itself is not responsible for the loan, per the Art Newspaper.
“The French state owns the tapestry and the museum is only its custodian,” a spokesperson for the Bayeux Museum told the paper. “We therefore can’t answer questions on its conservation and restoration, nor on the organization of the loan, which is the responsibility of the state.”
The number of signatures on the petition “isn’t enough,” Rykner tells the Art Newspaper. “But we have a year in hand, we still have time.”
The historian, who edits the online arts journal La Tribune de L’Art, has organized other petitions before. Last year, he led an effort to reverse Macron’s decision to commission contemporary stained-glass windows for the newly restored Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, replacing 19th-century windows by architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc that were not damaged in the fire. As of this writing, that petition has more than 294,000 signatures, but it hasn’t been successful in stopping the window replacement.
The upcoming loan of the Bayeux Tapestry will mark the first time in nearly 900 years that it returns to English soil.
“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, a museum studies scholar at Syracuse University, tells the Times.