12 Fascinating Secrets of the Bayeux Tapestry

The Bayeux Tapestry, an extraordinary 11th-century work of art, tells the story of the events surrounding the Norman conquest of England in 1066. It is usually housed at the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Bayeux, France, but it will return to England in 2026 for a year-long exhibition at the British Museum while its permanent home is renovated. In return, the UK will lend France some of its own priceless treasures: the Sutton Hoo ship burial artifacts and the Lewis chessmen. 

Let’s uncover a few secrets of the Bayeux Tapestry.

1. The tapestry is nearly 1000 years old.
2. It depicts the betrayal that sparked the Norman invasion of England.
3. The tapestry was not made in France …
4. … And it’s not actually a tapestry.
5. The first mention of the tapestry in print appeared in 1476.
6. The tapestry reveals details about everyday life—and the famous Battle of Hastings.
7. It features a lot of penises.
8. The Victorians made a censored copy of the Bayeux Tapestry.
9. One scene contains a still-unidentified mystery woman.
10. The tapestry includes the world’s oldest visual depiction of Halley’s comet.
11. The Nazis stole a fragment of the Bayeux Tapestry.
12. The end of the tapestry’s story is missing.

The tapestry is nearly 1000 years old.

The Bayeux Tapestry is thought to have been commissioned around the year 1077 by William the Conqueror’s half-brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux, to decorate his newly built cathedral. The 230-foot tapestry tells the story of the Norman conquest of England from a Norman perspective. According to research by an art historian at the University of York, the tapestry had been designed to exactly fit the walls of the nave of Bayeux Cathedral.

It depicts the betrayal that sparked the Norman invasion of England.

King Edward (the Confessor) had no children, which made the succession of the English throne complex [PDF]. Many people staked a claim, including Sweyn II, king of Denmark, and Harald Hardrada, the king of Norway. The Normans believed William, duke of Normandy, to be the rightful heir. But the powerful Saxon nobleman Harold Godwinson, earl of Wessex, had other ideas.

Because the tapestry was created by the Normans, it depicts their justification for William’s invasion by focusing on Harold’s betrayal. Harold is shown attempting to ingratiate himself with King Edward in the hope of being named heir. He then travels to Normandy but his ships are captured and he is held hostage until William of Normandy valiantly rescues him. Harold, in gratitude, is depicted swearing loyalty to William on holy relics. Harold then returns to England and, upon King Edward’s death in January 1066, has himself crowned king of England, breaking his oath of fealty to William and the Normans. Outraged, William gathers an army to take back what he believes is his rightful crown and the invasion begins.

The tapestry was not made in France …

No documentary evidence survives to prove exactly who made the tapestry, but experts believe it was created in Canterbury in England, most likely by Anglo-Saxon nuns; only women engaged in embroidery in the 11th century. The style of the tapestry is very similar to the embroidery known to have been carried out in Canterbury at the time, leading historians to identify Kent as its likely origin.

… And it’s not actually a tapestry.

A tapestry is a piece of art that is woven by hand on a loom. The Bayeux Tapestry is not woven; it’s actually a piece of embroidery on a long bolt of linen. The story was hand-stitched using colored wool thread. No one is quite sure how long the tapestry took to create, because we don’t know how many people were working on it at once, whether the materials to make it could be easily sourced, what the workshop was like, and even how much daylight the embroiderers had to carry out their task. What we do know is that it’s a masterpiece of design and skill.

The first mention of the tapestry in print appeared in 1476.

It is not known how or when the tapestry was transported from England to Bayeux. The first known record of its existence comes from a Bayeux Cathedral inventory in 1476, so we know that by this point it was in France. Because it’s in pristine condition for such an ancient textile, Historians think the tapestry was often stored in a wooden chest and only occasionally put on public display, thereby keeping it safe from sunlight and other threats.

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The tapestry reveals details about everyday life—and the famous Battle of Hastings.

The tapestry is a wonderful record of life in Norman France and Anglo-Saxon England, but its greatest value lies in its depiction of war. The embroidered scenes show the designs of Norman ships, what Norman castles looked like, and how castle mounds were used as defenses. We see that Norman soldiers wore helmets with a nose guard, held oblong shields, and wielded swords, clubs, and spears. The Norman cavalry used saddles with stirrups, a new development that allowed greater control of a horse and allowed soldiers to remain steady in position, freeing their hands to hold weapons.

The decisive Battle of Hastings, where William defeated Harold, is depicted as a long and bloody battle in which both sides saw mass casualties. The key detail of King Harold’s death, from being shot in the eye by an arrow, has been subject to some debate. Later medieval onservators appear to have worked on the panel featuring the death scene and adapted the stitching to make the arrow more prominent, perhaps to fit in with popular poems and songs describing the manner of Harold’s defeat.

It features a lot of penises.

The tapestry includes 58 scenes showing 626 characters, 202 horses, 37 ships, 35 dogs, three women and … 93 penises. Eighty-eight of the precisely stitched penises belong to horses (with the largest appendage on the horse of William the Conqueror) but the rest are human. In 2025, renowned Bayeux tapestry scholar Christopher Monk announced that he had identified a 94th penis on one of the men depicted in the border of the tapestry, who appears to have … something … dangling beneath his tunic. Oxford historian George Garnett, who had tallied up the 93 penises a few years earlier, disputes Monk’s assertion and believes the new penis is in fact the scabbard of a sword.

The Victorians made a censored copy of the Bayeux Tapestry.

Elizabeth Wardle, a skilled embroiderer and member of the Leek Embroidery Society in Staffordshire, visited the Bayeux Tapestry in 1885 and decided to make a replica so that England might have its own version of the masterpiece. She and other society members set out to make an accurate copy using Wardle’s notes on the original in Bayeux and photographs kept at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Thirty-five women worked on the project and completed it within a year. 

The copy is remarkably accurate except for one small detail. In the original, several men are shown naked, and in the copy, each of these men is wearing underwear. But it wasn’t the women who imposed this prudery: They were faithfully copying the photos from the Victoria & Albert Museum, which had been sanitized by male staff members. 

One scene contains a still-unidentified mystery woman.

Though the story of the Norman invasion of England is well known, the tapestry itself still contains some mysterious elements, and one of the most arresting is the depiction of a woman named as Aelfgyva. In the early part of the tapestry, Harold goes to visit the duke of Normandy, and a panel shows an elaborate decorated doorway with a male cleric touching the face of a woman. The inscription above reads Ubi unus clericus et Aelfgyva (“Here a certain clerk and Aelfgyva”).

Historians have identified this as a significant panel because it is the only scene in which a woman is the focus of the action. Despite numerous theories about the scene’s meaning—for example, that it depicts the tapestry’s commission or a sex scandal—no one has yet been able to identify the woman and what role she played in the story.

The tapestry includes the world’s oldest visual depiction of Halley’s comet.

Comets have long been thought of as bad omens, so it’s not surprising that a comet soars through the sky and a group of soldiers points to it in awe in the panel portraying the eve of the Battle of Hastings. Scientists have confirmed that Halley’s comet did pass over England on October 14, 1066, on the exact day of the Battle of Hastings. It is thought that the tapestry represents the oldest visual representation of Halley’s comet.

The Nazis stole a fragment of the Bayeux Tapestry.

In March 2025, the Schleswig-Holstein state archives in Germany announced it had discovered a small fragment of the Bayeux Tapestry in its collection. It had been clipped from the original work by officials with the Nazi Ahnenerbe, an organization under the SS tasked with promoting works of art that it felt demonstrated the supremacy of an Aryan race. The Nazis were attracted to the tapestry because the Normans were thought to be descended from Vikings, and the Normans’ victory over the Anglo-Saxons fed into the Nazis’ own views of their supposed superior Nordic ancestry.

In 1941, textile expert Karl Schlabow visited the tapestry as part of an Ahnenerbe team and removed a small part of the backing fabric, which he took back to Germany. It was meant to be evidence in a project asserting the Bayeaux Tapestry as an example of Nordic/Aryan supremacy, but it never came to fruition. The fragment was deposited in the archives and forgotten after the war—until the archive staff came across it. 

The tiny piece of linen serves as a reminder of how art can be exploited for political ends. It will be returned to France and reunited with the rest of the tapestry in 2027.

The end of the tapestry’s story is missing.

The tapestry’s story is unfinished, and it’s unclear what happened to the missing final panels. It’s possible that they simply degraded with age. Most historians agree that the tapestry’s narrative probably ended with William’s crowning as king of England on Christmas Day in 1066. In 2014, embroiderers on the Channel Island of Alderney, recreated the imagined scenes of William’s coronation in the style of the original, finally giving an ending to the story.