BAYEUX, town of France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Calvados, 18m. N.W. of Caen. Pop. 6,551. It is situated on the Aure, five miles from the English Channel. Bayeux, the Augustodurum of the Romans, afterwards Civitas Baiocassium, had a bishopric from the late 4th century. Taken in 890 by the Scandinavian Rollo, it was soon after peopled by the Normans, one of whom, Duke Richard I., built about 96o a castle which survived till the 18th century. During quarrels be tween sons of William the Conqueror it was pillaged by Henry I. in 1106, and later it underwent siege and capture on several oc casions during the Hundred Years' War and the religious wars of the 16th century. Till 1790 it was the capital of the Bessin, a district of lower Normandy. Its cathedral retains nave-arches and portions of the western towers from the Romanesque (12th century) church. The main structure is 13th century Gothic; the central tower is 15th century, with a modern top-storey. The church is one of the finest in Normandy, its crypt is 11th century, restored in the 15th century. The former bishops' palace (I I th-14th centuries) is now the hotel-de-ville, law etc. Bayeux possesses many quaint timbered houses and stone mansions in its quiet streets. The museum contains the celebrated Bayeux tapestry. Lace-making and the manufacture of porcelain for domestic and laboratory purposes are carried on. The town is the seat of a bishop and of a sub-prefect; it has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, and an ecclesiastical seminary.