In the Great Hall of Parliament House hangs one of the world's largest tapestries.

Earlier this year, the mammoth work of art was quietly taken off the wall for the first time since 1999. Then last week, it turned up somewhere rather unexpected - unfurled on the floor of the Members Hall.

Armed with vacuums, a team of conservation experts, Parliament House staff and students from the University of Canberra had gathered for a delicate operation.

The tapestry was getting its first clean in 14 years.

This was no Sunday vacuum of the loungeroom rug, explains conservation student Tom O'Rourke.

"We were in restricted areas, there were whole mechanisms attaching it to the wall, we had to wear gloves and little blue booties."

Conservator at Art & Archival Melissa Bolin oversaw the week-long project and said the tapestry was in remarkably good condition - give or take a few cobwebs.

"I've never done anything on this scale, it was hard work," she said.

"It was so big to unroll, we needed a lot of help...We did find a few insects too but that's to be expected after so long up there."

What she wasn't quite prepared for was the enduring vibrancy of the artwork. Far from the grand heoric scene often found on tapestries in great halls, this piece was modelled on a landscape painting by Australian Artist Arthur Boyd, and the light under a a eucalypt forest.

"It's so much better up close," Ms Bolin said.

"And we had to get close, we were down on our hands and knees or laying down on it."

Mr O'Rourke admits he was overwhelmed the first time he saw the tapestry in the Great Hall as a child.

"It was so much bigger than me then but it was even more daunting up close. I was hesitant at first to walk on it.

"But seeing it in all that detail, the colours are still so alive. It definitely feels like my Australian story now, I cleaned that thing."

While the finished work fits together seamlessly, Ms Bolin said the tapestry is actually woven in four separate panels, held together with velcro. Sometime in the two years it took to weave, Halley's Comet appeared in the sky - and found a home in the tapestry as well.

"We got every excited when we started on that panel," Ms Bolin said. "There's a cockatoo in there too."

The team had a captive audience of MPs and staffers lingering in the hall all week as they overlaid previous photographs of the tapestry to assess its condition.

No repairs are needed as yet, Ms Bolin said, but the work will remain off the wall until at least September while renovations continue on the skylight in the Great Hall.