Mont-de-Marsan's most surprising attraction occupies two medieval towers on the edge of the old town. The Despiau-Wlérick museum is devoted to early twentieth-century figurative sculpture, centred on the work of two local masters: Charles Despiau and Robert Wlérick. Both were working in Paris during the interwar years, rejecting abstraction in favour of careful, humanist portraiture and figure work.
The collection is far stronger than the town's size would suggest. Busts, nudes, and relief panels fill the stone rooms of the towers, and the quality of the works — alongside pieces by contemporaries such as Maillol and Bourdelle — makes this one of the better sculpture museums in the southwest. Allow an hour and a half.