FRANCE

Bayeux

 

Bayeux Tapestry

11th-century “comic strip” recounts the 1066 taking of England by William the Conqueror

TO BEGIN with, it’s an embroidery, not a tapestry, the former being sewn onto a backing, the latter created whole on a loom. Nonetheless, this 70-metre-long strip of linen created nine centuries ago has long been famous as the Bayeux Tapestry. Even now “the brilliance of its coloured wools has barely faded,” the story it tells still enlivened “with scenes of medieval life, popular fables and mythical beasts,” says the 13th edition of the Rough Guide to Brittany & Normandy.

The tale it relates is of William the Conqueror’s 1066 conquest of England. “The tapestry looks, and reads, much like a comic-strip,” says the guidebook. England’s King Harold is “every inch the villain, with his dastardly little moustache and shifty eyes.” Nevertheless, although meant as propaganda, “it’s considered to be historically accurate.”

Aside from its limning of William’s victory, “much of the pleasure of viewing it comes from its incidental vignettes of contemporary life.” They’re captioned in Latin on the cloth, but audio guides offer concise summaries.

The tapestry was commissioned for the inauguration of Bayeux Cathedral in 1077. It remains in Bayeux, but now in an 18th-century seminary a few hundred metres away that’s been converted into the Centre Guillaume le Conquérant (www.bayeuxmuseum.com). “Unexpectedly, and unceremoniously, the first thing you see on entry is the tapestry itself… Only afterwards comes an exhibition and film show that tell you more about it.”

Bayeux, 23 kilometres west of Caen (itself 238 kilometres west of Paris), “was the first French city to be liberated in 1944, the day after the D-Day landings. It was occupied so quickly…that it escaped serious damage.”

 

www.roughguides.com