Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux

Undoubtedly the world's most celebrated piece of embroidery, the Bayeux Tapestry is housed in the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux . Upstairs there's a short historical film and a full-size reconstruction of the tapestry, but you'll be better off skipping both and heading downstairs to see the real thing. An audioguide is included in the admission price.

The tapestry recounts the story of the Norman conquest of England in 58 remarkable scenes, briefly captioned in Latin, and all told from an unashamedly Norman perspective. Scholars believe that the 70m-long tapestry was commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux, William's half-brother, to commemorate the opening of Bayeux cathedral in 1077. The main narrative fills up the centre of the canvas, while religious allegories and depictions of daily life in 11th-century France unfold in the borders. The tapestry is not only remarkable for its astonishing size, but also its vivid pictorial detail - the final showdown at the Battle of Hastings is depicted in truly graphic fashion, complete with severed limbs, decapitated heads and a battlefield steeped in soldiers' blood. Halley's Comet, which blazed across the sky in 1066, even makes an appearance.