Opelousas is foremost a music town, and the place to find zydeco is in the bars and dance halls rather than on a stage — this is music for dancing, not watching. The Jim Bowie Museum covers the local connection to the Alamo hero. The Opelousas Museum and Interpretive Center on the town square documents the city's multi-layered history: French, Spanish, African, and Creole. The historic downtown, centred on Court Street, has a compact collection of late 19th-century commercial buildings worth a short walk.