The Bayeux 'Tapestry' is not woven but embroidered: wool thread on a linen ground. Over 70 metres long and 50 centimetres high, the strip narrates the events of 1064-1066 across some 70 distinct scenes — Harold Godwinson's dispatch to Normandy, Edward's death, Harold's coronation, and finally William's victory at the Battle of Hastings.

Current consensus is that the work was made in an Anglo-Saxon workshop, probably near Canterbury, but commissioned by the Norman patron Odo (William's half-brother and bishop of Bayeux). This paradox is present in the work itself: the conquered hands embroider the conqueror's story, but inflected by the perspective of those who lost.

The visual idiom is remarkably effective. The upper and lower margins are populated with mythical beasts, fables from Aesop, and naked figures — and these combine, in the battle sections, with details such as the stripping of the dead and falling horses. Latin inscriptions fix the scenes, while the image itself reads cinematically: the editing is sharp, the transitions abrupt. Even the 1066 appearance of Halley's Comet is shown in its own frame — an observation of near archival value.

The embroidery hung in Bayeux Cathedral on feast days until the eighteenth century. Today it is preserved under controlled conditions at the Tapestry Museum in Bayeux, and is on the UNESCO Memory of the World register.