Museum of Bayeux Tapestry, Bayeux, France

Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux is a museum dedicated to the famous Bayeux Tapestry. This hand-woven 70m long tapestry tells the story of William the Conqueror’s invasion of England in 1066. The manmade wonder of the 11th century has been well preserved, leaving the town of Bayeux only twice: once when Napoleon used it to show his troops that conquering England was indeed possible, and the second time during World War II, to save it from being damaged. Each year, the Tapestry Museum is visited by over 400000 visitors who marvel at the glass encased masterpiece.

Museums in France

User Reviews

Alan A (5 months ago)
The Bayeux Tapestry is well worth a trip out of your way to see it. Liked the exhibits in the museum. Realize that when you go through the tapestry, you cannot stop the audio guide. So you have to keep walking. But the guide is really interesting. The town is also worth spending a few hours to walk through. See the church also.

Peter Prekopp (5 months ago)
Opening hours of the museum are unusual. The museum will shut one hour ( or two hours can't really remember ) for lunch. If you are interested in visiting the complete museum bear this in mind. The Tapestry part can be visited in less than an hour. Free audioguide provided. Photography not allowed ( if I only knew that ). The museum should reconsider opening hours. Nice souvenir shop

Stephen Harris (6 months ago)
Interested in historic items? This is for you! Well laid out with headphone audio narration whilst viewing the tapestry, this keeps everything orderly and keeps the queue moving effectively. Audio is clear, informative and available in your choice of language. Note, If you're British and making a special journey to view this, the French government have agreed to loan the tapestry to the UK in the very near future.

Angela Burt (7 months ago)
An amazing piece of art and history. Beautifully preserved given some of its uses over the years. Extremely well displayed at last, it's so much bigger than expected and the colours and details are exquisite. Such a fabulous record of events.

Fabrizio Iozzi (9 months ago)
Definitely a must! For historical reasons of course but mainly because this wonderful more than 70 meters long tapestry is beautiful. Every frame is a masterpiece of art from around 1066 and the figurines, the objects, the animals are colored and somehow naively depicted that you'll love them. The pace of the visit is a bit fast but this is due to the many visitors they have.

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Moszna Castle

The Moszna Castle is one of the best known monuments in the western part of Upper Silesia. The history of this building begins in the 17th century, although much older cellars were found in the gardens during excavations carried out at the beginning of the 20th century. Some of the investigators, including H. Barthel, claimed that those cellars could have been remnants of a presumed Templar castle, but their theory has never been proved. After World War II, further excavations discovered a medieval palisade.

The central part of the castle is an old baroque palace which was partially destroyed by fire on the night of April 2, 1896 and was reconstructed in the same year in its original form by Franz Hubert von Tiele-Winckler. The reconstruction works involved an extension of the residence. The eastern Neogothic-styled wing of the building was built by 1900, along with an adjacent orangery. In 1912-1914, the western wing was built in the Neo-Renaissance style. The architectural form of the castle contains a wide variety of styles, thus it can be generally defined as eclectic.

The height of the building, as well as its numerous turrets and spires, give the impression of verticalism. The whole castle has exactly ninety-nine turrets. Inside, it contains 365 rooms. The castle was twice visited by the German Emperor Wilhelm II. His participation in hunting during his stay at the castle was documented in a hand-written chronicle in 1911 as well as in the following year. The castle in Moszna was the residence of a Silesian family Tiele-Winckler who were industrial magnates, from 1866 until the spring of 1945 when they were forced to move to Germany and the castle was occupied by the Red Army. The period of the Soviet control caused significant damage to the castle's internal fittings in comparison to the minor damage caused by WWII.

After World War II the castle did not have a permanent owner and was the home of various institutions until 1972 when it became a convalescent home. Later it became a Public Health Care Centre for Therapies of Neuroses. Nowadays it can be visited by tourists since the health institution has moved to another building in the neighbourhood. The castle also has a chapel which is used as a concert hall. Since 1998 the castle housed a gallery in which works of various artists are presented at regular exhibitions.

Apart from the castle itself, the entire complex includes a park which has no precise boundaries and includes nearby fields, meadows and a forest. Only the main axis of the park can be characterised as geometrical. Starting from the gate, it leads along the oak and then horse-chestnut avenues, towards the castle. Further on, the park passes into an avenue of lime trees with symmetrical canals running along both sides of the path, lined with a few varieties of rhododendrons. The axis of the park terminates at the base of a former monument of Hubert von Tiele-Winckler. On the eastern side of the avenue there is a pond with an islet referred to by the owners as Easter Island. The islet is planted with needle-leaved shrubs and can be reached by a Chinese-styled bridge. The garden, as part of the whole park complex was restored slightly earlier than the castle itself. Preserved documents of 1868 state that the improvement in the garden's aesthetic quality was undertaken by Hubert von Tiele-Winckler.

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