For British schoolchildren, 1066 is a talismanic year: the year of the Norman Conquest when William the Conqueror defeated Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. The medieval masterpiece, a 230-foot textile record of William's victory, has traveled from France to England for a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition at the British Museum. Until next July, the tapestry is on display in an exhibition of unparalleled diplomatic significance.

King Charles III and President Emmanuel Macron of France were on hand to inaugurate the show, which Macron masterminded as part of a post-Brexit détente. To judge from advance sales and media saturation, Macron hit the mark, with tickets costing nearly $45 selling out in less than a day. The loan has been hyped as a once-a-millennium homecoming and is a British Museum triumph for a British audience.

For locals, the work can be seen as the rarest survivor of the country's origin. But to a foreign eye, the only justification to move the fragile embroidery was as an instrument of 21st-century political reconciliation. Foot by foot, fiber by fiber, this is the material proof of England's entwinement with the continent 21 miles from its coast.

At the British Museum, the tapestry lies flat in a single vitrine, running nearly 230 feet in a long, dark gallery. There is basically no interpretation and, except for a smattering of coins and a manuscript or two, no other objects in the show. No audio guides, either, thank goodness.

A minimal animation on the gallery's longest wall points out highlights, translates some inscriptions and, most importantly, keeps crowds moving.