Bayou, France (AP) – For centuries, storytelling masterpieces have been a source of wonder and charm. In vivid and frightening details, the 70 metres (230 feet) embroidered fabric tells the story of a fierce duke from France conquering England in 1066 and reshaping British and European history.
The Tapestry of the Bayou has a scene of the sword-wielding knight in ferocious battles and the famous King Harold of England’s death, and has served since the 11th century as a sobering calm of military power, vengeance, betrayal, complexity of Anglo-French relations, blood and potential cooperation, and a soothing concentration of love and cooperation.
Now commissioned as a propaganda for William, Duke of Normandy, known as the “Conqueror,” after taking the British throne from Harold, the medieval pioneer of today’s comic strip, is ready for a new story mission.
Tapestry Homecoming
Next year, the fragile, artistic and historic treasure will be brought to Singer from a museum in Bayou, Normandy. Big hit exhibition From September 2026 to July 2027, at the British Museum in London.
The UK’s first outing in almost a thousand years will testify to the latest chapter of the warming of bonds across the cooled UK channel An intense UK departure From the European Union in 2020. The loan was announced in July by the French president. Emmanuel Macron Became the first EU head of state to pay Visiting the state I went to the UK since Brexit.
Antoine Bernie, curator of the Bayou Museum, says cross-channel travel will bring together households for tapestry. Because historians widely believe that it is embroidered in the UK as it is a massive confluence in British history, using wool threads on linen canvas and William’s victory in the Battle of England.
“For the British, the date – the only date – known to be 1066,” Bernie said in an interview with the Associated Press.
It’s not a riskless trip
The artwork is very cumbersome and made of linen fabric made from nine linen fabrics, showing 626 characters, 37 buildings, 41 ships, 202 horses and mules in a total of 58 scenes is even more complicated by the wear of its great age and time.
“There are always risks. The goal is for those risks to be calculated as carefully as possible,” curator Bernie said.
Believed to have been commissioned by the conqueror brother, Bishop William Ode to adorn the new cathedral at the Bayou in 1077, this treasure is mostly kept on wooden chests and is believed to have survived the French revolution, fires and other dangers that have been largely unknown for seven centuries.
Since then, only two embroidery has been known to have been exhibited outside the city of Normandy. Napoleon Bonaparte was shown at the Louvre Museum in Paris from late 1803 to early 1804. We landed in Normandy on D-DayOn June 6th of that year, he fought Paris and released him.
The work, which has been seen by more than 15 million visitors to the Bayou Museum since 1983, “has the unique characteristic of being monumental and extremely vulnerable,” Bernie said. “Textile fibers are 900 years old. Therefore, they naturally deteriorate due to their age. At the same time, this is a work that has already been widely migrated and is being processed in large quantities.”
Renovated museum
During his treasured stay in the UK, the Bayou museum wins a massive facelift of tens of millions of euros (dollars). The doors will be closer to visitors starting September 1st this year, with plans to reopen in October 2027, with embroidery being renovated in new buildings.
To be precise, it is not yet clear how the treasure will be transported to the UK.
“The research necessary to allow a relocation to London and an exhibition at the British Museum is not completed, debated and is being carried out between the two governments,” Bernie said.
However, he expressed confidence that it was in safe hands.
“In my view, how can you imagine the British Museum, through the exhibition, that this work, a key element of its shared heritage, risks damaging it?” he asked. “I don’t think that the British could take the risk of putting these major art history and key elements of World Heritage Sites at risk.”
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Leicester reported from Paris.
