The UK Treasury will insure the Bayeux Tapestry for an estimated £800m when it goes on show at the British Museum (BM) next year. According to the Financial Times, which first reported details of the agreement, the protection will cover damage or loss during the transfer of the tapestry from Normandy and also while it is on display at the British Museum from next autumn.
The UK Treasury told the newspaper that it had “received an estimated valuation of the Bayeux Tapestry which has been provisionally approved” with officials involved in the project told that the final valuation will be “around £800m”. The Treasury did not dispute this figure when approached.
The artefact, created in the 1070s, will be covered under the Government Indemnity Scheme (GIS) which, according to a government website, is overseen by the UK department for culture, media and sport (DCMS). The scheme, backed by UK taxpayers, “allows art and cultural objects to be shown publicly in the UK which might not have been otherwise because the cost of insurance would have been too high”. GIS is estimated to have saved UK museums and galleries around £81m a year compared to the cost of commercial insurance.
Details revealed in the six-page “administrative agreement” between the French and UK culture ministries about the tapestry exhibition include organising a dry run of the transfer to London using a crate “containing a facsimile of the tapestry equipped with a vibration analysis device”. The tapestry will reportedly finally come to London in a truck via the Channel Tunnel.
The Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the 1066 Norman invasion and Battle of Hastings, will be displayed in the Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery of the British Museum from next September until July 2027 while its current home, the Bayeux Tapestry Museum in Normandy, undergoes renovations. The display will mark the first time the precious tapestry has been in Britain in almost 1,000 years.
A BM spokesperson said that its Sainsbury Exhibitions Gallery is “long enough to be able to accommodate the Tapestry being displayed in a single length”. The size of the BM gallery helps to explain why it secured the loan, rather than the other main contender, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum.
In return, some of the British Museum’s treasures—including the Lewis chessmen, the Sutton Hoo helmet, the Mold gold cape, and the Dunaverney flesh hook—will travel to Normandy. The historic loan agreement was announced in July by the French president Emmanuel Macron and the British prime minister Keir Starmer at the British Museum.
The new €38m Bayeux Tapestry Museum, designed by the British architecture practice RSHP (Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners), is due to reopen in October 2027, to mark the thousandth anniversary of the birth of William the Conqueror.
