Lycée Camille-Sée, High school in France

Lycée Camille-Sée is a public secondary school at 11, rue Léon-Lhermitte in the 15th arrondissement, facing square Saint-Lambert. Its main building, a 1930s Art Deco structure of concrete with crushed pink granite and marble, fills an entire block and has six levels served by four staircases. Inside, mosaic floors with a labyrinth pattern decorate the courtyard and halls, and a rotunda marks the main entrance.

Construction of the lycée was decided fifty years after that of the lycée Buffon, on the site of the former Vaugirard gasworks, from which Léon Gambetta's balloon took off during the 1870 siege of Paris. The architect François Le Cœur led the works, continued by his son after his death, and the school was inaugurated on 1 June 1935 with Marie-Thérèse Évrard as first headteacher. At the end of the Second World War it was temporarily turned into a hospital.

The school bears the name of Camille Sée, the deputy who tabled the 1878 bill on girls' secondary education, debated fiercely and passed in 1880. Its walls appear in Robin Campillo's 2017 film 120 battements par minute, and the last episode of the Canal+ series Bref ends with a shot of the building.

The main entrance is at 11, rue Léon-Lhermitte, facing square Saint-Lambert; the sports annex is on rue Mademoiselle, about forty metres north. Métro Commerce and Vaugirard and bus line 39 serve the site. The building has six levels, four staircases and three levels below street level.

The school occupies the site of the former Vaugirard gasworks, from where a balloon carrying Léon Gambetta took off during the 1870 siege of Paris. A now-closed pavilion in the square opposite was linked to the school by an underground passage, and the rotunda entrance was reserved for staff.