Macron visits Bayeux Tapestry with King and UK PM

French President Emmanuel Macron joined King Charles III and new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham to see the Bayeux Tapestry, an almost 1000-year-old symbol of Anglo-French relations, at its temporary home in the British Museum.

The three leaders and their spouses were on Wednesday given a private viewing of the 70-metre artwork, which depicts the Norman conquest of England in 1066.

France loaned the embroidery, insured for 960 million euros ($A1.6 billion), for a 10-month exhibition that opens to the public on September 10. It was spirited from France to London by road and rail in a clandestine high-security operation in July, the first time since the 11th century that it has touched British soil.

Burnham said that the tapestry's return "is a landmark moment in the history of our two nations."

Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, had tea with the King and Queen Camilla at their Clarence House residence before traveling to the museum by royal Bentley to meet Burnham, the prime minister's wife, Marie-France van Heel, and members of the teams that brought the tapestry from France to the UK.

They walked the length of the tapestry, displayed horizontally in high-tech cases, and stopped to examine several of its 58 scenes of combat, coronation and the suffering of ordinary people swept up in the last successful invasion of England.

Stitched in wool thread on linen fabric, the artwork depicts events leading up to the Battle of Hastings in October 1066, when William, Duke of Normandy, defeated King Harold's Anglo-Saxon army. The invasion ended Saxon rule, made William the Conqueror the first Norman king of England, and bound Britain and France together in a close and complicated relationship.

Historians believe the tapestry was commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William's half brother, and was probably sewn by women in England - possibly nuns - before being taken across the Channel. It has spent most of the last millennium in the town of Bayeux in northwest France, apart from two short periods at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The loan was agreed after delicate diplomatic negotiations - and despite concern from some French cultural figures about the risk of moving the delicate cloth - and announced during Macron's state visit to the UK in July 2025. In return, the British Museum is lending items including Viking and Anglo-Saxon treasures to museums in Normandy.

The year 1066 remains one of the most famous dates in British history, and the loan of the tapestry is being treated by UK authorities as a once-in-a-millennium cultural moment.

Burnham, who took office six weeks ago, will host Macron for talks at 10 Downing St on Thursday. Burnham's office said that efforts to stop migrants crossing the Channel in small boats will top the agenda.