Jacob Phillips
Reporting from the British Museum

Image source, Reuters

Hundreds of history buffs flocked to the British Museum today to get up close and personal with one of the most famous pieces of art in the UK's history: the Bayeux Tapestry.

Visitors were awed by how vibrant the embroidery is, nearly 1,000 years after its threads were first stitched.

One of the first visitors told me he was "absolutely blown away" by the experience. In particular, he was excited to find his workplace - Westminster Abbey - woven into the background.

Others were caught staring deeply into the faces of its characters - but only for a short period before they were moved along the art piece by museum staff. One man told me that it felt like "extreme queuing", and at times like being on a conveyor belt.

When I got my chance to view it myself, I was taken aback by the sheer scale of the work and felt I locked eyes directly with King Harold when I first entered the museum's exhibition hall.

The tapestry's return to British soil for the first time since it's creation has sparked a Bayeux fever, inspiring themed tattoos and mini versions sewed by modern Brits.

The tapestry is truly a British relic - what a place to be stuck in a queue.

We're now ending our live coverage. Thanks for joining us.

The Normans transformed our landscape, language and literaturepublished at 18:08 BST

18:08 BST

Katie Razzall
Culture editor

The Normans transformed our landscape, with signs of their oppression everywhere. Think of all those castles built to subdue the population, many of which still stand today.

After a series of rebellions, William the Conqueror also replaced almost all the English nobles - and the land they owned - with Normans.

The Norman Conquest also changed our language. Old English was still spoken by normal people, but for several centuries French became the language of the state (with Latin used in church and other formal writing).

Over time, it led to a melding of languages and hundreds of new words - we got "court", ‘"parliament" and even "government" from the French.

The Normans also hugely influenced our literature, for example introducing the concept of romantic love (“the Anglo Saxons didn’t write about it” Dr Eleanor Parker, a medieval historian at Oxford University, told me).

Without the Norman Conquest, our literature would have evolved very differently and academics trace a direct line from 1066 to Chaucer and Shakespeare.

Perhaps without William the Conqueror, the works of our greatest playwright, another William, might never have been written….

Jacob Phillips
Live reporter

French President Emmanuel Macron joked that it had "probably taken more years to deliver than all the Brexit negotiations" when he announced the tapestry's loan to the British Museum.

Macron first publicly said he wanted to send the work to Britain during a summit at Sandhurst in 2018, Peter Ricketts, the special envoy to the Bayeux Tapestry, tells me.

But it was not until the beginning of 2025 that the real political effort picked up pace, he says.

The deal came to a dramatic conclusion at the Cannes Film Festival a few months later, during a meeting between former Culture Minister Chris Bryant and his French counterpart Rachida Dati.

When Bryant asked Dati if the tapestry would come to the UK she replied: "I'm not going to have it unless you propose marriage to me".

Recalling the moment on Radio 4, Bryant recounted that he told Dati he already had a husband. Her response: "So what? What's wrong with polyamory".

At the end of the meeting Bryant went down on one knee and proposed, officially securing the tapestry.

Image source, Chris Bryant

Paul is a British Museum member and saw the tapestry today.

He was about number 800 when he joined the virtual queue for tickets and was "over the Moon" to get a slot for the first day of the exhibition.

He says the tapestry "takes your breath away" - and that you don't realise how "amazing" it is until you see it in person.

His favourite scene is "the bit where he gets the arrow in the eye", he says, referencing an image often believed to depict King Harold's death - although historians dispute whether it is actually Harold.

Louise says the exhibition is worth the hype - and that seeing it up close lets you appreciate "how much work went into it".

"You could see it 100 times and probably still see things you hadn't seen first time," she says, praising the tapestry's detail.

While the exhibition has been criticised by some as expensive, Louise points out that the process of transporting the tapestry from France was also costly.

She thinks tickets are at "the right price point for what you actually get".

Katie Razzall
Culture editor

Image source, Reuters

Re-enactors won't be here every day but in the end this has all felt very British, with people queuing politely.

Everybody who I have spoken to after they saw the tapestry for themselves said it was worth the hype and the price - although some of them got in for free because they are British Museum members.

One young woman I spoke to said it was easier to get tickets for this than to get concert tickets for her favourite bands.

I also spoke to a nun who said that as she was moving along the tapestry she was thinking of the English women - nuns amongst them - who most likely embroidered it all those years ago.

In the future there might be some bad tempers as people struggle with the long queues - the museum is expecting 800,000 people over the next 10 months.

But for today, everybody is very aware they are part of history in the making.

Image source, Getty Images

Tributes to the medieval artwork have been years in the making - quite literally.

Olympic medallist Tom Daley has unveiled a Shaun the Sheep tribute to the Bayeux Tapestry in the Natural History Museum - called the Baa-Ewe Tapestry.

Measuring at 7m (23ft), it took 15 designers and textile specialists 180 hours to create, with the final touches stitched by Daley himself.

And looking further back, in 2017, Northern Ireland's tourism board commissioned a Game of Thrones-themed version of the tapestry to commemorate the show - much of which was filmed in the country.

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

How much do tickets cost?

Standard pricing begins at £33 for adults. It's £25 for students, people aged 16-18, and jobseekers, as well as disabled visitors. Children under 16 can enter for free alongside an accompanying adult ticket. More details are on the British Museum site, external.

Alright, I'm sold, how do I get a ticket?

At the moment, you can't - admission is sold out until the new year. But the next wave of bookings opens on 21 October.

How long the tapestry will be at the British Museum?

The Bayeux Tapestry is only on loan to the UK while its home in France is renovated. It's set to return back to the Bayeux Museum in north-west France in July 2027, which is the 1,000th anniversary of the birth of William the Conqueror.

So who owns the Bayeux Tapestry?

The 11th Century artwork is owned by the French state.

Where was the tapestry made?

According to the British Museum, it's unclear exactly where the artwork was made. But, it says most scholars today think it was made in England, likely near Canterbury.

As we stretch into the late afternoon of the opening day of the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, enthusiasm for the historic spectacle shows no sign of slowing down.

Across the British Museum you can spot costume-clad staff members keeping the steady line of visitors entertained ahead of their slot.

Image source, Reuters

Image source, Getty Images

Image source, Reuters

Katie Williams
Live reporter

As the British Museum throws open its doors to the first lucky visitors to its Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, throughout the day we've been retelling the story of the Norman Conquest right here.

If you missed that, let's recap some of those key moments the 70m (230ft) tapestry:

• The story begins with Harold Godwinson heading to France around the year 1064 on an unspecified mission. Harold is brother-in-law to the elderly King of England, Edward the Confessor
• Harold is captured and handed over to William, Duke of Normandy. He later swears a sacred oath - some say in support of William's claim to the throne of England
• Edward the Confessor dies leaving no direct heirs and Harold is crowned King of England, provoking William's ire. An ominous comet is later seen flying overhead
• William gathers a massive army of Normans and they cross the Channel, making their way to Hastings
• The famous 1066 battle unfolds, with severed limbs and cartwheeling horses emblazoned in the embroidery
• In the chaos of the battle, rumours swirl that William might be dead - until he lifts his helmet to prove otherwise
• The English army weakens as their shields fill with arrows. King Harold is killed - potentially by an arrow to the eye although historians remain uncertain - and the English flee

Image source, Getty Images

Katie Razzall
Culture editor

Image source, Corbis via Getty Images

The British Museum regularly tops the list of the most popular visitor attractions in the UK (although in 2025, the Natural History Museum pipped it to first place).

But in recent years, its popularity hasn’t been the main narrative associated with the museum.

The theft of many hundreds of mainly undocumented Greek and Roman artefacts from its collection made global headlines back in 2023.

The demands for the return of objects to their countries of origin regularly make news. This week, museum representatives are meeting a Jamaican government minister who is calling for the return of tribal artefacts taken during slavery.

Whether it is the demand by Nigeria for the museum to give back its Benin Bronzes or from Greece for the Parthenon sculptures, the issues around restitution have not gone away.

The Bayeux Tapestry exhibition and the, so far, glowing headlines about it are a moment for a reset, a reclaiming of a more positive narrative.

Freya Scott-Turner
Live reporter

Image source, Parliament Tattoo

Jack Glover, a tattooist in north London, says he has done several custom designs based on the Bayeux Tapestry for clients in his seven years working as an artist full-time.

“I love the quirkiness and dimensions of a lot of medieval art,” he says.

When he learned the tapestry was coming to the British Museum, Jack decided to commemorate the medieval masterpiece by creating a flash sheet based on it - a collection of pre-drawn tattoo designs from an artist that clients can choose from.

“It’s hard to choose a favourite scene. Thematically, it’s a great muse for my work. Halley’s Comet is one of my favourites."

“The most popular scene I’ve tattooed would definitely be the supposed death of King Harold," he says - adding that he "can't wait" to go and see it in person.

Image source, Parliament Tattoo

Madeleine Lake
Live reporter

Image source, Mia Hansson

Mia Hansson from Cambridgeshire has spent over a decade creating a full-scale replica of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Her passion for the embroidery does not come from a love of history, which was the only subject that made her "fall asleep in school".

"I wanted something juicy to work on that would keep me busy for a long time," she says. And that it did.

Though Hansson describes herself as a perfectionist, she says she included the errors in the original in her own version too because "you don't honour their work by fixing their mistakes".

A decade on from when she first started, and she’s just 9m from finishing the roughly 70m long tapestry – at a pace of 6m a year. She's now racing against the clock for its return next year to Normandy and says she "might have to stop sleeping" if it's not finished.

One buyer offered Hansson £100,000 for the piece, but she's been told by an expert that it could auction for around £1m.

Jacob Phillips
Reporting from the British Museum

Throughout the day I've been asking people who have visited the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition to walk me through the experience.

Two key points seem to come up again and again: The awe and spectacle of standing at the top of the stairs, seeing the full length of the Bayeux Tapestry beneath you for the first time. And the vibrancy of the colours despite the embroidery being 950-odd years old.

Now it's time for me to see it for myself.

A group of 10 of us have just been allowed in and been given instructions about what we're allowed to take pictures of. The key things are no flash and keep moving.

But once inside it’s not quite the flowing experience we were hoping for.

A queue of maybe 50 people stretches along the first part of the exhibition, which features videos on the side of the wall.

The first person who saw the Bayeux Tapestry this morning was out of there in around 26 minutes. It may take us that long to reach it from here.

Thousands of soldiers, two rivals, one arrow.... here we go.

If cartwheeling horses, succession crises and grizzly battle scenes have piqued your interest then there's a wealth of extra content across the BBC for you to dive in a bit further:

• There's a special 1066 episode on the BBC podcast “You’re Dead to Me” - listen on BBC Sounds
• Meanwhile, a new iPlayer documentary follows painstaking efforts to bring the priceless work of art back to the UK: “Secrets of the Bayeux Tapestry: Inside the Museum”
• And other content on BBC Sounds answers questions like: What did the Normans ever do for us?

You've also got options if you missed out on tickets to the exhibition. We share some tips in our earlier post.

Katie Razzall
Culture editor

Image source, Reuters

I had a sneak preview of the tapestry with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy earlier this week.

She’d already viewed it with the King, President Macron and other dignitaries, and told me when King Charles arrived at the scene of Harold’s demise, he said: "Oh dear."

She was also struck by the schoolchildren on that visit. “It could have been a blockbuster movie playing out in front of their eyes. They found it so exciting and dramatic."

I asked her about reports in the French media that two threads on the tapestry have been broken.

She said she had been reassured that “there is no significant damage” and she is “confident” the artwork will return to Bayeux - where they are building a new museum - “intact and as it was”.

Serious damage would be costly to the taxpayer as the UK government has guaranteed the work for £800m.

Nandy described it as “a big undertaking and we wouldn’t have made it lightly”.

The loan was finalised when Keir Starmer was prime minister and she shared that the new PM, Andy Burnham, “gazed at me open-mouthed when he found out how much we had indemnified it for”.

It was a moment of levity between us. She - and he - believe the work is in good hands and everything has been done to ensure it is protected.

A moment that changes the future of England foreverpublished at 15:42 BST

15:42 BST

Katie Razzall
Culture editor

The most famous scene in the tapestry comes late on (scene 57 out of 58), when Harold takes an arrow to his eye.

It’s the story so many of us learn at school, that Harold Godwinson, King of England, died at the Battle of Hastings after being shot in the eye.

In fact, it’s disputed whether the embroidered arrow was in the original Bayeux Tapestry at all or if 19th Century restorers sewed it in to tie in with the narrative that developed in the centuries after the Norman Conquest around how Harold died.

What is more certain is that the defeat in 1066 led to a dramatic social and political transformation of the country. Harold was the last Anglo-Saxon king to be crowned.

The Norman Conquest was the last successful invasion of Britain. And it was the moment when the future of England - and eventually the British Isles - changed forever.

Image source, Bayeux Museum

While visitors at the British Museum journey through the Bayeux Tapestry in person, we're retelling some of its key moments here. We're now reaching the end of the Battle of Hastings, which was in full flow in our previous post.

This just in, King Harold Godwinson has been killed at the Battle of Hastings.

At number 57 of the tapestry's 58 scenes is a figure with an arrow in his eye. "Here King Harold is killed", reads the accompanying text.

But, but, but...

Historians debate whether the arrow was actually in the original version of the tapestry or added in a 19th Century restoration. While others have suggested that the slain Harold may be a different figure in this scene - a soldier on horseback to the right.

What we know for sure is that King Harold is dead, and the Battle of Hastings is over as the Anglo Saxon flee in the final scene of the tapestry.

Image source, Bayeux Museum

Sisters Sharmaine and Jennifer from Sydney, Australia, spoke to the BBC from the front of the queue before doors opened to the public.

Jennifer says she waited less than 45 minutes to buy tickets online: "[It was] straightforward, yeah got them easily. I was really surprised".

It's their last day in London, and she says that while they didn't know much about the Bayeux Tapestry, they "knew enough to know that if it was here, I needed to see it".

Historical debate rumbles on over a certain appendage in the Bayeux Tapestry.

In 2018, Oxford academic Prof George Garnett counted 93 penises – with 88 belonging to horses and another five to men.

However, another medieval scholar, Dr Christopher Monk, said he had counted one more on another man.

Prof Garnett said he believed he was still correct and that the potential penis was the scabbard of a man's dagger because "right at its end is a yellow blob", which he took to be brass.

"If you look at what are incontrovertibly penises in the tapestry, none of them have a yellow blob on the end," he told the History Extra podcast.

Is it a scabbard, dagger or sword? It's still not certain - but you can read more about this in our full story from last year.

Image source, Reuters

No, it's not the start of a joke or a riddle - it's the Bayeux Tapestry.

Women are actually at the heart of the story though, as many scholars believe the tapestry was made by English needlewomen.

Here are some other numbers from the embroidery:

• 58 scenes
• Around 68 metres in length
• 9 linen panels
• 4 coloured dyes (creating various shades)
• 5 types of stitch
• Over 620 men
• 6 women (three in the main embroidery, three in the borders)
• 737 animals
• 23 trees
• 33 buildings
• 37 ships

• 93/94 penises*

*We'll have more on this disputed figure in our next post.