Italy’s oldest man dies aged 109

Rome: Giuseppe Venturi, who was the oldest man in Italy, died on Tuesday aged 109 after a bout of bronchitis.

The news was announced by his granddaughter Roselena Nigro who said: “Our grandfather was our pillar, his immense and passionate life encouraged and comforted us”.

“He was lucid to the end, he told us that you can’t live forever” – she said – “And to remember to inject his cat, Silvestro, who is diabetic”, reports newspaper La Repubblica.

Venturi was described as a “passionate collector of hats and carved owls” and was one of the last Italians to remember another pandemic before covid: the Spanish flu.

Born on 13 April 1912, the year the Titanic sank, Venturi grew up in Marzabotto in the Emilia Romagna region, and lived in Bologna.

The oldest woman in Italy is 112-year-old Ida Zoccarato who was born on 24 May 1909 in Padua where she still resides today.

The longest-living Italian man on record was Sardinian Antonio Todde who was born in 1889 and died in 2002 at the age of 112 years and 346 days.