In scenes like a heist movie in reverse, the priceless medieval artwork was spirited into the British Museum on Friday in the dead of night, after a high-tech, tight-security operation where any slip-up could have spelled disaster.
On loan from its home in France, the tapestry will go on display at the London museum from September 10 until July 2027.
It's a public homecoming for a vivid visual record of the 1066 Norman invasion, the last successful conquest of England.
The tapestry's arrival in London has been widely anticipated, but due to security concerns all details of when and how it would arrive have been kept under wraps.
"It feels extraordinary that after so much work and planning and care and thought that it's actually happening," British Museum director Nicholas Cullinan said as he awaited the arrival after a secrecy-shrouded journey.
"It's the first time in 1000 years that such an important piece of British - French too - history is going to be on these shores.
"It's incredibly exciting."
The 70-metre tapestry was folded accordion-style in a climate-controlled case that was placed inside a shock-absorbing cradle.
That went into a truck that crossed from France on a vehicle shuttle train through the Channel Tunnel.
After an 11-hour, 560km trip, escorted by police, the truck backed slowly into a loading bay at the museum, where workers gingerly eased the container, the size of a small car, to the ground.
Museum staff and British and French diplomats who had been watching in hushed silence broke into applause.
The priceless cargo will spend several days acclimatising before it is carefully unpacked and unfolded for an exhibition that the museum expects to be one of the most popular in its history.
Some 100,000 tickets were sold in their first day on sale in July.
Stitched in wool thread on linen fabric, the artwork depicts the events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in October 1066, when William, Duke of Normandy defeated King Harald's Anglo-Saxon army.
The invasion ended Saxon rule and made William the Conqueror the first Norman king of England.
Historians believe the tapestry was commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William's half-brother, and was probably sewn by women in England before being taken across the Channel.
It has spent most of the past millennium in the town of Bayeux in northwest France, apart from two short periods at the Louvre in Paris.
The tapestry symbolises the sometimes fractious, intertwined histories of France and Britain, and securing the loan was a high-stakes diplomatic mission.
It was announced during a state visit to the UK by French President Emmanuel Macron in mid-2025.
The loan coincides with renovations at the museum in Bayeux that houses it.
In return, the British Museum will lend treasures from the Sutton Hoo hoard - artefacts from a 7th-century Anglo Saxon ship burial - and other items to museums in Normandy.
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