List of Italian supercentenarians

Antonio Todde

Antonio Todde (22 January 1889 – 3 January 2002)^[16] was an Italian supercentenarian who, at the time of his death shortly before his 113th birthday, was the oldest man in the world.^[78] Todde was born in the village of Tiana, in the province of Nuoro, Sardinia,^[79] an area noted for its centenarian density.^[80] Born to a poor shepherd family, Todde was the third of 12 children. In 1920, at age 31, he married Maria Antonia, then aged 25, and they had four daughters and a son. She died in 1990, aged 95.^[81] He left Sardinia only to fight in the First World War,^[78] where he was injured in the shoulder by a grenade.^[82] He died at age 112 years and 346 days on 3 January 2002.

Venere Pizzinato

Venere Ires Pizzinato (married Papo; 23 November 1896 – 2 August 2011)^[83] was an Italian supercentenarian^[4] who lived for 114 years and 252 days. At the time of her death she was the oldest person ever from Italy.^[84]

She was born in Ala, Trentino, then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. World War I forced her to take refuge in Bazzano, Bologna. After the war, she moved to Milan, where she took Italian citizenship and met her future husband Isidoro Papo. During the outbreak of the Second World War, in 1939, the couple moved to Nice, France, to escape the Fascist regime of Benito Mussolini. They married in France, and after the war they moved back to Milan. Upon retirement in 1964, they settled in Verona. Mr. Papo died in 1981. Pizzinato remained in Verona for the rest of her life, spending her final years in a retirement home.^[85][86][87]

On 23 November 2010, marking her 114th birthday, Pizzinato was visited by Italy's president, Giorgio Napolitano, who wrote her a congratulatory letter.^[88]

Marie-Josephine Gaudette

Marie-Josephine Clarice Gaudette (25 March 1902 – 13 July 2017) was the oldest living Italian from the death of Emma Morano on 15 April 2017 until her own death three months later. Born in Manchester, New Hampshire, to French Canadian immigrants, she was also the oldest living person born in the United States from May 2016 to July 2017.^[89]

A nun known as Mother Cecilia, she lived in Canada and France before settling in Rome.^[90] She lived at the Convento di Gesù e Maria from 1958 until her death,^[91] and was considered "the world's oldest nun".^[92] Gaudette died on 13 July 2017, aged 115 years and 110 days.^[93]

Giuseppina Projetto-Frau

Giuseppina Projetto-Frau (married Frau; 30 May 1902 – 6 July 2018)^[94] was, at age 116 years and 37 days, the oldest living person in Italy from the death of Marie Josephine Gaudette on 13 July 2017, and the world's second-oldest verified living person upon the death of Nabi Tajima on 21 April 2018, until her own death on 6 July 2018.^[95]

She was born in La Maddalena, but was of Sicilian origin. Her maternal grandfather had moved from Sicily with the expedition of Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1946, she married Giuseppe Frau, a widower with three children. At the time of her death, Projetto lived in Tuscany with her daughter-in-law and grandchildren.^[96][97]

Delio Venturotti

Delio Venturotti (25 October 1909 – 1 June 2022) was the oldest living Italian-born person and the second oldest man in the world at the time of his death.^[34]

He was born in Calto, Veneto, Italy. He left Italy at the age of three with his parents and two sisters, after his father had been informed of the potential for a large war in Europe. The family arrived in Rio de Janeiro and took another ship to Espírito Santo, where Venturotti worked on plantations. He would later go on to work as a driver, and, starting in the 1940s, in a fabric store. He married Dulcina Gama (born 1921) on 15 March 1946 and had four children. The couple later moved to São Paulo, and 29 years later to Florianópolis.^[34] He became the oldest Italian-born person upon the death of Ida Zoccarato on 16 January 2022.^[34] When he died in June 2022,^[98] aged 112 years and 219 days, he was the second oldest man in the world after Juan Vicente Pérez; his death left Pérez as the last verified man born in the 1900s decade.^[99]

Lucia Laura Sangenito

Lucia Laura Sangenito-Abbondandolo (born 22 November 1910) is the oldest living person in Italy and the third oldest living person in the world.

Lucia Laura Sangenito-Abbondandolo was born in Sturno, Campania, Italy.^[100] She has lived there her entire life. As a young woman, she worked in the fields.^[101][102] She married in February 1939 and had four children; two of whom died as infants, with the other two, daughter Maria and son Michele, still living.^[103] She lost her home in the 1962 Irpinia earthquake and a new house was rebuilt in a different location in 1970. Her husband Pasquale Abbondandolo died at the age of 98 in 2010, and her mother Filomena Ceriello (1879–1980) died at the age of 101.^[103] When she was 107, she had surgery for a fractured femur.^{[101][104][105]} She quietly celebrated her 110th birthday in November 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On 1 June 2024, she was visited by LongeviQuest, one of the top age validation organizations, who gave her a certificate recognizing her for being (at that time) the second oldest living person in Italy.^[106] She is the oldest person ever from the Campania region of Italy,^[100][107] and, when Claudia Baccarini died on 24 December 2024, she became the oldest living person in Italy.^[101][108]