LONDON (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron joined King Charles III and new U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham on Wednesday to see the Bayeux Tapestry, an almost 1,000-year-old symbol of Anglo-French relations, at its temporary home in the British Museum.
The three leaders and their spouses were given a private viewing of the 230-foot (70-meter) artwork, which depicts the Norman conquest of England in 1066.
France loaned the embroidery, insured for
960 million euros ($1.1 billion), for a 10-month exhibition that opens to the public on Sept. 10. It was spirited from France to London by road and rail in a clandestine high-security operation in July, the first time since the 11th century that it has touched British soil.
Burnham said that the tapestry’s return “is a landmark moment in the history of our two nations.”
Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, had tea with the king and Queen Camilla at their Clarence House residence before traveling to the museum by royal Bentley to meet Burnham, the prime minister's wife, Marie-France van Heel, and members of the teams that brought the tapestry from France to the U.K.
They walked the length of the tapestry, displayed horizontally in high-tech cases, and stopped to examine several of its 58 scenes of combat, coronation and the suffering of ordinary people swept up in the last successful invasion of England.
Stitched in wool thread on linen fabric, the artwork depicts events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in October 1066, when William, Duke of Normandy, defeated King Harold’s Anglo-Saxon army. The invasion ended Saxon rule, made William the Conqueror the first Norman king of England, and bound Britain and France together in a close and complicated relationship.
Historians believe the tapestry was commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William’s half brother, and was probably sewn by women in England — possibly nuns — before being taken across the Channel. It has spent most of the last millennium in the town of Bayeux in northwest France, apart from two short periods at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
The loan was agreed after delicate diplomatic negotiations, and despite concern from some French cultural figures about the risk of moving the delicate cloth, and announced during Macron’s state visit to the U.K. in July 2025. In return, the British Museum is lending items including Viking and Anglo-Saxon treasures to museums in Normandy.
The year 1066 remains one of the most famous dates in British history, and the loan of the tapestry is being treated by U.K. authorities as a once-in-a-millennium cultural moment.
Burnham’s government said Wednesday that a digital exhibition will bring its story to venues across the U.K., and schoolchildren will take part in a “live national history lesson” on the subject on Oct. 14.
Burnham, who took office six weeks ago, will host Macron for talks at 10 Downing St. on Thursday. Burnham’s office said that efforts to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats will top the agenda. The U.K. government says stepped-up law enforcement cooperation between Britain and France has helped reduce the number of people making the crossing this year by more than 40% compared to last year.
The Iran and the Russia-Ukraine wars are also likely to feature in the conversations. France and the U.K. have led efforts to bolster European support for Ukraine during its more than 4½-year attempt to repel Russia’s full-scale invasion, and Burnham has vowed to maintain British backing for Kyiv.
The prime minister also wants to forge closer ties with the European Union to end what he has called a “decade of low growth” caused by Brexit after the 2016 referendum in the U.K.
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A previous version of this story was corrected to show that the cost of insuring the tapestry, which is on loan to the British Museum, is 960 million euros, not 960 billion euros.
