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Up to nine hours of waiting and more than 75,000 people in the queue. Booking opened on Wednesday 1 July for the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition in London.
The British Museum, which will host the textile masterpiece, had warned visitors that its website was likely to be “very busy”. And it was right. When booking opened at 11 am, more than 10,000 people were already in the online queue.
Around 3 pm, Euronews observed that the site was showing a queue of more than 76,000 people. “It is still advisable to book online, but waiting times can be up to 9 hours,” the website warned.
Despite the surge in traffic, the site managed to cope with the influx of visitors.
The most expensive tickets for the exhibition, which will run from next September to the following July, cost up to £33 (€38.50).
A unique exhibition
This is the first time in 1,000 years that the tapestry has gone on display in a museum other than its Norman home, and only the third time it has ever left its usual exhibition site. It was moved during Napoleon’s military campaigns against England and during the Second World War.
The tapestry, a piece of propaganda depicting William the Conqueror’s Norman conquest of England in 1066, was nonetheless made in England, according to several historians.
Conservators have put in place a very strict transport protocol to allow the 68.38 metres of tapestry to be moved. The thousand-year-old fabric is highly sensitive to vibration and is already weakened and torn in many places.