Hagaparken

This guide to Hagaparken in Stockholm follows Louis Jean Desprez, a French opera scene painter King Gustav III hired in 1784 and kept on for two decades to design the park as if it were his biggest stage set yet. It traces the Copper Tents, built as royal-guard barracks but dressed up like a Roman military camp, and the king's growing ambition for an even larger project to house his collection of Roman statues. Gustav is said to have called Desprez the only man in the country besides himself with any imagination.