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50 free Bayeux Tapestry trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Bayeux Tapestry trivia quiz covers the most famous piece of medieval needlework in the world and the story it tells: Harold's oath, Edward's death, the comet, the crossing and the Battle of Hastings. The easy questions are the ones any history student can manage: what event it depicts, roughly how long it is, where it is normally displayed and the famous scene of a man with an arrow in his eye. From there it moves into the scholarship: why experts think Bishop Odo commissioned it, why they believe it was embroidered in England, why it is technically not a tapestry at all, and what the first ever picture of Halley's Comet is doing in the border. The harder end is for medievalists and museum-goers: the 1476 cathedral inventory, the lawyer who saved it from being used to cover wagons in the Revolution, Napoleon's propaganda exhibition, Himmler's intercepted message, the mysterious Ælfgyva panel, the debate over whether the arrow was added later, the number of linen panels, the dyes, the Leek embroiderers who made the Reading replica, and the 2026 loan that took it back to Britain for the first time in 900 years. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the tapestry, Odo of Bayeux and the Norman Conquest before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror and medieval England quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which event does the Bayeux Tapestry depict?
The Norman Conquest of England in 1066
It runs from Harold's trip to Normandy to the Battle of Hastings.
Q 02Approximately how long is the Bayeux Tapestry?
70 metres
It is only about half a metre tall.
Q 03Why is the Bayeux Tapestry technically not a tapestry?
It is embroidered rather than woven
In a true tapestry the design is woven into the cloth; here wool is stitched onto a plain ground.
Q 04How many scenes make up the tapestry?
58
All carry Latin captions called tituli.
Q 05Whom did 20th-century scholars come to see as the tapestry's most likely patron?
Odo
He was William's half-brother and later regent in the king's absence.
Q 06Where do scholars widely accept the tapestry was made?
England
The Latin has Anglo-Saxon hints and Anglo-Saxon needlework was famous across Europe.
Q 07By what French name is the tapestry sometimes known, after the queen legend credited with making it?
La Tapisserie de la Reine Mathilde
Twentieth-century scholarship replaced Queen Matilda with Odo as the likely patron.
Q 08Which English abbot, who had run a Norman scriptorium, has been proposed as the tapestry's designer?
Scolland of St Augustine's
Christine Grainge has instead argued for Archbishop Lanfranc.
Q 09What is the earliest known written reference to the tapestry?
A 1476 inventory of Bayeux Cathedral
It survived the Huguenot sack of Bayeux in 1562.
Q 10For which feast was the tapestry hung annually in its home church, according to the 1476 inventory?
St John the Baptist
By 1728 it was hung mainly to air it; the rest of the year it lived in a chest.
Q 11Which Benedictine scholar published the first drawings and full description of the tapestry in 1729-30?
Bernard de Montfaucon
The drawings were by Antoine Benoît, in Les Monuments de la Monarchie française.
Q 12During the French Revolution the tapestry was confiscated to be used for what?
Covering military wagons
A local lawyer rescued it from a wagon and hid it in his house.
Q 13Why did Napoleon have the tapestry displayed in Paris in the early 1800s?
As propaganda for his planned invasion of Britain
Q 21How much potential damage did the UK government agree to be liable for during the loan?
£800 million
An art historian's petition against moving it gathered over 40,000 signatures.
Q 22The tapestry is embroidered in wool on what kind of cloth?
Linen
Two stitches are used: stem stitch for outlines and lettering, and couching or laid work for filling.
Q 23How many separate cloth panels were sewn together to make the tapestry?
Nine
The first join, at the end of scene 13, is clumsy; the later ones are almost invisible.
Q 24Which farm implement makes its earliest known appearance in scene 10 of the tapestry?
When the invasion was abandoned it lost its propaganda value and went back to Bayeux.
Q 14Which draughtsman made a hand-coloured facsimile of the tapestry for the Society of Antiquaries in 1816?
Charles Stothard
His images record the tapestry before its 19th-century restoration.
Q 15Which Nazi leader coveted the tapestry as 'important for our glorious and cultured Germanic history'?
Heinrich Himmler
His 1944 message ordering it moved was intercepted by Bletchley Park.
Q 16Where did the Gestapo take the tapestry on 27 June 1944?
The Louvre
By the time the SS tried to seize it in August, the Louvre was back in French hands.
Q 17Fragments cut from the tapestry's underside by a Nazi research team in 1941 were rediscovered when?
2023
They were returned to Bayeux in 2026.
Q 18To which UNESCO register was the tapestry admitted in 2007?
Memory of the World
The register lists globally important documentary heritage.
Q 19Which French president announced in 2018 that the tapestry would be loaned to Britain?
Emmanuel Macron
In exchange, treasures such as the Sutton Hoo finds or the Lewis chessmen would visit Rouen and Caen.
Q 20Under the 2025 loan deal, which London institution was to host the tapestry in 2026–27?
The British Museum
Tickets for the first four months sold out within 24 hours.
A harrow
It was a newly invented tool at the time.
Q 25Which celestial visitor appears in the upper border, in the first known picture of it?
Halley's Comet
Below it, ghostly ships in the lower border hint at the coming invasion.
Q 26The final caption, 'Et fuga verterunt Angli' (and the English retreated), is considered what?
Entirely spurious, added shortly before 1814
It dates from a period of anti-English sentiment; the true ending is missing.
Q 27What do scholars think the missing final panel showed?
William being crowned king
Norton estimates the lost panel was some three metres long.
Q 28At the dedication of which building in 1077 was the tapestry probably meant to be displayed?
Bayeux Cathedral
Norton showed it would fit neatly along the south, west and north arcades of the nave.
Q 29Who sends Harold to Normandy in the tapestry's opening scene?
Edward the Confessor
Harold lands in the wrong place and is taken prisoner by Guy, Count of Ponthieu.
Q 30Outside which monastery does Harold rescue two Norman soldiers from quicksand?
Mont Saint-Michel
The scene comes during William's campaign against Conan of Brittany.