The Bayeux Tapestry is a unique artifact of its kind an embroidered cloth nearly 230 ft long and 20 in tall, which depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England concerning William, Duke of Normandy, and Harold, Earl of Wessex, later King of England, and culminating in the Battle of Hastings. It is thought to date to the 11th century, within a few years after the battle. It tells the story from the point of view of the conquering Normans, but is now agreed to have been made in England. 
Remarkably well preserved, the Bayeux Tapestry features on UNESCO's ?Memory of the World? Register, thus ensuring its conservation and its registration as an artifact of universal value. Saved many times from destruction through the course of history, the ' Cloth of the Conquest ' (its other name) continues to reveal its secrets today.

Sylvette Lemagnen, conservator of the tapestry, in her 2005 book La Tapisserie de Bayeux:

The Bayeux tapestry is one of the supreme achievements of the Norman Romanesque. It's survival almost intact over nine centuries is little short of miraculous. It's exceptional length, the harmony and freshness of its colors, its exquisite workmanship, and the genius of its guiding spirit combine to make it endlessly fascinating.

The cloth consists of some fifty scenes with Latin tituli (a term used for the labels or captions naming figures or subjects in art, which were commonly added in classical and medieval art,), embroidered on linen with colored woolen yarns. It is likely that it was commissioned by Bishop Odo, William's half-brother, and made in England - not Bayeux - in the 1070s. In 1729 the hanging was rediscovered by scholars at a time when it was being displayed annually in Bayeux Cathedral. The tapestry is now exhibited at the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, Normandy, France.

The designs on the Bayeux Tapestry are embroidered rather than woven, so that it is not technically a tapestry.  Nevertheless, it has always been referred to as a tapestry until recent years when the name "Bayeux Embroidery" has gained ground among certain art historians. It can be seen as a rare example of secular Romanesque art. Tapestries adorned both churches and wealthy houses in Medieval Western Europe, though at 1.6 by 224.3 ft, and apparently incomplete the Bayeux Tapestry is exceptionally large. Only the figures and decoration are embroidered, on a background left plain, which shows the subject very clearly and was necessary to cover large areas.

On 18 January 2018, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that the Bayeux Tapestry would be loaned to Britain for public display. It is expected to be exhibited at the British Museum in London, but not before 2020. It will be the first time that it has left France in 950 years.

The first reference to the tapestry is from 1476 when it was listed in an inventory of the treasures of Bayeux Cathedral. It survived the sack of Bayeux by the Huguenots in 1562; and the next certain reference is from 1724. Antoine Lancelot sent a report to the Académie Royale des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres concerning a sketch he had received about a work concerning William the Conqueror. He had no idea where or what the original was, although he suggested it could have been a tapestry. Despite further inquiries he discovered no more.

During the French Revolution, in 1792, the tapestry was confiscated as public property to be used for covering military wagons. It was rescued from a wagon by a local lawyer who stored it in his house until the troubles were over, whereupon he sent it to the city administrators for safekeeping. After the Terror the Fine Arts Commission, set up to safeguard national treasures in 1803, required it to be removed to Paris for display at the Musée Napoléon. When Napoleon abandoned his planned invasion of Britain the tapestry's propaganda value was lost and it was returned to Bayeux where the council displayed it on a winding apparatus of two cylinders. Despite scholars' concern that the tapestry was becoming damaged the council refused to return it to the Cathedral.

In 1816 the Society of Antiquaries of London commissioned its historical draughtsman, Charles Stothard, to visit Bayeux to make an accurate hand-colored facsimile of the tapestry. His drawings were subsequently engraved by James Basire Jr. and published by the Society in 1819-23. Stothard's images are still of value as a record of the tapestry as it was before 19th-century restoration.

By 1842 the tapestry was displayed in a special-purpose room in the Bibliotheque Publique. It required special storage in 1870 with the threatened invasion of Normandy in the Franco-Prussian War and again in 1939-1944 by the Ahnenerbe during the German Occupation of France and the Normandy landings. On 27 June 1944 the Gestapo took the tapestry to the Louvre and on 18 August, three days before the Wehrmacht withdrew from Paris, Himmler sent a message (intercepted by Bletchley Park) ordering it to be taken to "a place of safety", thought to be Berlin. It was only on 22 August that the SS attempted to take possession of the tapestry, by which time the Louvre was again in French hands. After the liberation of Paris, on 25 August, the tapestry was again put on public display in the Louvre, and in 1945 it was returned to Bayeux, where it is exhibited at the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux.