Bayeux Tapestry

The Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered woollen cloth nearly seventy metres long and about fifty centimetres tall, worked in colored wool thread on linen rather than woven, that narrates in fifty-eight scenes with Latin captions the events of 1064 to 1066 leading up to the Norman conquest of England, including William of Normandy's claim to the English throne and the Battle of Hastings, where he defeated Harold II. It is generally believed to have been made in England during the 1070s, possibly commissioned by William's half-brother Bishop Odo of Bayeux, though its exact origin is not certainly known. Long kept in Bayeux, Normandy, and now displayed at the Musee de la Tapisserie de Bayeux, it is one of the most important surviving pictorial records of eleventh-century warfare, dress and daily life, and after nearly nine hundred years is due to be lent to the British Museum in London.