The copper tents, Architectural ensemble in Haga Park, Sweden

The copper tents are an architectural ensemble in Haga Park, Solna Municipality, north of Stockholm, made up of buildings whose facades and roofs are shaped to look like tightly stretched military tents. The outer shells are clad in copper and follow a neoclassical design by French architect Louis Jean Desprez.

King Gustav III commissioned these buildings in the 1780s to house the royal guard stationed at Haga Park. The king brought Louis Jean Desprez from France to design them, as part of a broader effort to introduce French artistic ideas into the Swedish royal court.

The name comes from the decoratively painted copper sheeting that forms the tent fronts. The central tent has housed Haga Park Museum since 1983, the eastern tent has held an inn since 1912, and the western tent contains apartments. The rear sides show ordinary yellow plaster and wooden facades, so the military-tent effect is only a stage set facing the park.

The buildings sit within Haga Park and can be reached by following any of the paths that wind through the grounds. Walking around them from different angles gives a better sense of how the copper cladding and tent-like forms work together.

The copper cladding slowly turns green over the years as it reacts with the air, so the buildings look different today than they did when they were first built. This gradual color shift is a natural property of copper, not a sign of damage.