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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The Podensac Dead Monument, dedicated to the victims of World War I, was erected between 1922 and 1923 at the corner of the municipal cemetery. This municipal project combined a commemorative and funerary dimension: on the street side, a stele decorated with a symbolic sculpture (a winged victory embracing a dying soldier) marked the public space, while on the cemetery side, a vault was set up to accommodate the remains of the Podensacian soldiers repatriated from the battlefields. The integration of cannons, from the previous monument to the dead of 1870 still present in the city, reinforced the link between successive conflicts and local memory.

Ranked Historic Monument by order of 21 October 2014, the whole includes the stele, its entourage side street, as well as the vault and cannons side cemetery. The precise location, noted as "passable" (level 5/10), places the monument at the 20 Cours du Général de Gaulle, on the communal public domain. The property and maintenance belong to the town hall of Podensac, stressing its central role in preserving this girondin memorial heritage.

This monument illustrates a national trend between the two wars: the erection of gathering places combining funerary art and patriotic symbols. In Podensac, as elsewhere in New Aquitaine, these achievements reflected both collective mourning and the desire to glorify the sacrifice of soldiers, in a context of moral and social reconstruction after 1918. The use of pre-existing elements (the cannons of 1870) also shows a commemorative continuity between the various conflicts that marked the commune.

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