Bayeux Tapestry Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
6correct to beat the crowd
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 01Before 1066, Duke William, the victor of the Bayeux Tapestry's story, was generally known by which nickname?
William the Bastard
William the Bastard: his parents, Duke Robert and Herleva, never married, and he inherited Normandy as a boy of seven or eight, decades before 1066 earned him a grander name.
Q 02Approximately how long is the Bayeux Tapestry?
70 metres
70 metres is too much cloth to take in at once: in the early 1800s Bayeux's custodian showed it to visitors by turning the crank of a winder, unrolling it across a table a stretch at a time.
Q 03Despite its name, how were the Bayeux Tapestry's pictures actually made?
Stitched onto cloth with a needle
Stitched onto cloth with a needle, so it is really an embroidery: a true tapestry's picture is woven in on the loom. The even lines suggest an artist first drew the whole design on the cloth.
Q 04Which animated sitcom opened a 2008 episode with its family feuding with the neighbours in Bayeux Tapestry style?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons: in the couch gag for 'E Pluribus Wiggum', the family rides to medieval war against the Flanders clan, who have made off with the family sofa.
Q 05Whom did 20th-century scholars come to see as the Bayeux Tapestry's most likely patron?
Bishop Odo
Bishop Odo, William's half-brother, is the favourite: he gets a flattering part in the story, and three of the few minor figures it bothers to name were his own followers.
Q 06The Bayeux Tapestry celebrates a Norman victory, but where do most scholars think it was actually made?
England
England, most likely Canterbury: its figures echo drawings in manuscripts made there, so the Normans' triumph was probably made by the very people they had just conquered.
Q 07French legend long credited the Bayeux Tapestry to which queen, the wife of William the Conqueror?
Matilda of Flanders
Matilda of Flanders was said to have made it with her ladies-in-waiting, and it was long called Queen Matilda's Tapestry, yet nothing but her marriage ties her to it.
Q 08How does the Bayeux Tapestry help viewers tell English soldiers from Normans?
The English have moustaches
The English have moustaches and long hair, the Normans cropped hair shaved high up the neck: the designer used national hairstyles so viewers could follow who was who.
Q 09The earliest written mention of the Bayeux Tapestry, from 1476, appears in what kind of document?
A treasury inventory
A treasury inventory of 1476 is the first record of it, four centuries after it was made: it was brought out once a year and shut in a wooden chest the rest of the time, and no other record mentions it until the 1720s.
Q 10Which TV fantasy series was retold in a Bayeux-style tapestry made in Northern Ireland from 2017?
Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones, much of it filmed in Northern Ireland, got a hanging that outgrew its model, and in 2019 it travelled to Bayeux to be exhibited near the original.
Q 11Which London church, then brand new, does the Bayeux Tapestry show as the burial place of Harold's predecessor on the throne?
Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey had been consecrated barely a week earlier, with its royal founder too ill to attend; the tapestry shows his funeral procession arriving at the brand-new church.
Q 12During the French Revolution, the Bayeux Tapestry was reportedly seized to be used for what?
Covering military wagons
Covering military wagons was to be its fate in 1792, by local tradition, until a Bayeux lawyer stepped in at the last minute and rescued the old cloth.
Q 13Napoleon had the Bayeux Tapestry shown in Paris in 1803-04 while he was preparing which campaign?
Q 21For the Bayeux Tapestry's 2026-27 loan to London, the UK Treasury agreed to cover damage up to about what value?
£800 million
£800 million is the value the Treasury put on it under the Government Indemnity Scheme, which stands in for commercial insurance: the state itself promises to pay if a borrowed treasure is damaged.
Q 22What kind of cloth forms the background of the Bayeux Tapestry?
Linen
Linen: the cloth is really nine separate lengths, each worked on its own and then joined end to end, with the seams disguised afterwards.
Q 23The battle was fought near Hastings, but where does the Bayeux Tapestry show William's fleet coming ashore?
Pevensey
Pevensey is named in the caption as the landing place; from there the Normans ride on to Hastings and throw up a castle mound to guard their camp before the battle.
An invasion of England
An invasion of England was being readied on the Channel coast, and a cloth celebrating a successful one is widely read as propaganda for it; it hung in Paris that winter.
Q 14Which Hollywood film runs its opening credits over scenes from the Bayeux Tapestry?
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, the 1991 Kevin Costner hit, opens on the tapestry even though its hero belongs to the age of Richard the Lionheart, more than a century after Hastings.
Q 15Which Nazi leader ordered the Bayeux Tapestry carried off as Paris was being liberated in 1944?
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler's order was picked up by Bletchley Park's codebreakers, and by the time his SS men came for the cloth, the building holding it was back in French hands.
Q 16In June 1944 the Germans moved the Bayeux Tapestry to which Paris landmark?
The Louvre
The Louvre took it in that June and still held it when Paris was freed in August; that winter the whole cloth was hung there for Parisians to see before it went home in March 1945.
Q 17What do the Bayeux Tapestry's captions call Harold in the scene of his death?
King
King: the captions give Harold the royal title from his coronation to his death at Hastings, while William stays plain 'duke' throughout, even though the story is told to justify William's conquest.
Q 18UNESCO's World Heritage List is for places, so in 2007 the Bayeux Tapestry joined which other UNESCO list?
Memory of the World
Memory of the World is UNESCO's register of documentary heritage: the tapestry got in as a record of 11th-century life, a history book told in thread instead of ink.
Q 19Which French president first announced that the Bayeux Tapestry would be lent to Britain?
Emmanuel Macron
Emmanuel Macron made the offer at a 2018 summit, overruling experts who called the cloth too fragile to move; a 2022 date slipped, and it finally crossed the Channel in 2026.
Q 20Which London institution was chosen to show the Bayeux Tapestry during its 2026-27 loan from France?
The British Museum
The British Museum got it while Bayeux's own museum shut for rebuilding: the cloth made the trip folded concertina-style on a padded screen, after two dry runs.
Q 24One of the few women in the Bayeux Tapestry is shown leading her child out of what?
A burning house
A burning house, set alight by two of the invading soldiers: a glimpse, in a story told from the Norman side, of what the conquest cost ordinary people.
Q 25Which comet, taken as an omen in 1066, appears in the Bayeux Tapestry's upper border?
Halley's Comet
Halley's Comet hangs over a crowd who point up at it in fear, while a messenger carries news of the strange star to the newly crowned Harold.
Q 26Once ashore, what does the Bayeux Tapestry show William's men doing before the battle?
Cooking and eating a feast
Cooking and eating a feast: chickens roast on spits, a stew bubbles over the fire, and servants carry the food to table on shields, all from supplies the army has just seized.
Q 27What do scholars think the Bayeux Tapestry's lost final scene showed?
William being crowned king
William being crowned king, on Christmas Day 1066, is the likeliest ending: the last stretch of cloth perished long ago, so the story now stops with the English in flight.
Q 28Scholars think the Bayeux Tapestry was made to hang around which part of Bayeux Cathedral?
The nave
The nave: one study found the cloth would have run neatly along its south, west and north arcades, and it was still being hung there once a year four centuries later.
Q 29Who sends Harold to Normandy in the Bayeux Tapestry's opening scene?
Edward the Confessor
Edward the Confessor is seen talking with Harold, who then sails for Normandy, but the tapestry never says why he went: Norman writers claimed it was to promise William the throne.
Q 30Outside which monastery does the Bayeux Tapestry show Harold rescuing Norman soldiers from quicksand?
Mont Saint-Michel
Mont Saint-Michel looks on as the army crosses into Brittany and Harold drags trapped men to safety, a heroic turn for the man the rest of the story sets out to condemn.