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The study of sports facilities in the high schools of Brittany shows the ebb and flow of the public policies in support of physical education since the middle of the 19th century. While the ministers of Public education during France’s Second Empire, Fortoul and Duruy, were in favour of the discipline, their action confined itself to the commission of standard plans, which never materialised because of the indifference or the impecunity of the municipalities. The sole gymnasium that was designed as such during this period has been preserved within a private educational institution in Vannes, a successor to the pedagogical traditions of the Jesuit schools of the Ancien Régime. After the shock of the 1870 defeat, military training of the youth became France’s national priority, and the “Loi George”, the George Law of 1880 boosted the construction of sports facilities in all of the boys’ public schools. Until 1939, these constructions, however, offered a great diversity of building types related to the heterogeneous population of students in the high schools and their choice of location (isolated or integrated premises within the overall plan). The explosion in the number of high schools during the “Trente Glorieuses”, the thirty years of post-war economic growth in France, imposed the use of series construction: from 1957 onwards, several national or regional competitions aiming to create industrialised and cost-effective sports buildings, resulted in interesting technical and formal research.