Musée Ingres Bourdelle

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was born in Montauban in 1780 and became the most exacting draughtsman of 19th-century France. When he died he left his home town an extraordinary gift: more than 4,000 of his drawings, along with his paintings, his library and even the violin he liked to play. The town put them in the old bishop's palace by the river Tarn, and the museum has carried his name ever since.

The drawings are the treasure, sheet after sheet of pure contour line, studies for the great commissions he laboured over for years. A few finished pictures hang among them, including some of the polished nudes and portraits that made his reputation.

Montauban produced a second major artist, and he shares the sign over the door. Antoine Bourdelle, the sculptor who trained under Rodin, was born here in 1861, and when the museum reopened in 2019 after a long restoration it added his name to the door and gave his heavy bronzes rooms of their own.