Adele Corsanego goes to a gym class three mornings a week and is always up for a party. She drinks wine with every meal, and eats pasta, cheese and tiramisu. She is 108 years old.
“I’ve always been very active,” she told the Guardian in an interview at the David Chiossone nursing home in Genoa. “I walked and cycled a lot, and played tennis for most of my life.”
Scientists often turn to Italy in their quest to explain why there are so many sprightly people living beyond 100. The number reaching the milestone is rising: according to data released this summer by Istat, the national statistics agency, Italy is home to 14,456 centenarians, up from 11,000 in 2009.
Of that figure, 1,112 are over the age of 105, more than double compared with a decade ago, while the number of supercentenarians, those aged 110 and above, rose from 10 to 21.
Studies have tended to concentrate on the islands of Sardinia and Sicily, or the southern regions of Lazio and Campania, usually in remote coastal or mountain villages seen as far from the stresses of modern life. But the largest proportion of centenarians (almost 650) in relation to the population size reside in the northern Liguria region, particularly in its industrial capital of Genoa, a long, tangled city of overpasses, underpasses and steep hills wedged between the sea and mountains.
As of early September, Genoa was home to about 288 centenarians, the majority of them women. This is expected to rise to 350 over the next few months as people reach their 100th birthday.
“Genoa has a strange combination of things,” said Valter Longo, a Genoa native and director of the Longevity Institute at the University of Southern California. “The birth rate is low, lots of elderly people move there from other regions, the climate is warm, healthcare system good … then there’s the diet, of which fish and fresh vegetables have always been a staple part, and so you’ll have some people making it to 105.”
The Genovese diet is mostly based on the typical Mediterranean mix of plenty of fish, fresh vegetables, fruit and occasionally meat, but also includes many inventions of its own.
The city’s most famous food export is pesto sauce, made with extra virgin olive, pine nuts and basil. Foccacia bread is also synonymous with the city as is farinata, a flatbread made with chickpeas.
Testaroli, a type of pasta from southern Liguria, is also popular, while vegetable quiche is eaten abundantly.
The Genovese also eat eggs, cheese and drink wine, with the added benefit of most of the ingredients they consume being produced locally or regionally.
Along with Corsanego, who turns 109 in January, the Guardian met Rina Verdoia, 102, and Pierina Travi, 104. All three women were born in the city, albeit from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Corsanego came from a bourgeois family that had the means to retreat to a mountain village in Piedmont during the second world war. She led a mostly privileged life and ate the best quality food.
Verdoia was born into a poor family, and Travi spent a period of her youth in a home run by nuns after her parents were left destitute. All three had one child.
Travi, who lives in a small home in central Genoa run by the Sant’Egidio charity, gave birth to her daughter at the age of 45. Verdoia is cared for by her daughter, who is in her 70s. Corsanego’s son died when he was in his 50s. Neither had parents or siblings who lived beyond 100.
All three eat a simple, fresh diet, which includes pasta and wine with every meal, as well as the typical Genoa staples of pesto sauce and focaccia. Over their lives they would deal with common ailments by letting them pass instead of taking medicine.
But other factors, such as Genoa’s topography, have possibly played a role in their longevity. “I always walked, everywhere,” said Travi, adding that she had never ventured beyond the province.
Walking in the city is difficult to avoid, whether through the narrow alleyways of the centre or up and down the hills of neighbourhoods beyond.
“Genoa has areas where people can live as if they were in a village,” Longo said. “My mother lived on a hill and would sometimes go down it and back twice a day with the groceries. These are also fairly friendly, close-knit communities.”
“The problem is not so much an ageing population but having too few young people,” said Andrea Chiappori, the president of Sant’Egidio’s Genoa branch. “This makes people think negatively towards elderly people as they are seen as a burden. It should instead be a good problem – living a long life should reflect that the quality of life and social system are good.”
Verdoia, who spent much of her life volunteering, said the secret to her resilience is “helping and respecting others”.
“Especially those who are poor … everything you do to help others comes back to help you,” she added. Friendship is another key, she said. Travi “remains a child at heart”, she said. “I always got on well with others, never argued.”
Corsanego, who is always the first to arrive for the hour-long gym classes and readily embraces the nursing home’s social activities, advised “living life in the present, without worrying too much about the future”.
