Europe’s oldest man, Vitantonio Lovallo, has died at the age of 112.
It was shared that Lovallo passed away on September 15 in Avigliano, Italy.
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Lovallo was born on March 28, 1914, and began working as a shepherd when he was just 16 years old.
As he grew older, he met his future wife in the village where she had been sent to recover from pleurisy. The couple got married in 1936 and went on to have four children: Lucia, born in 1938; Vincenzo, born in 1940; Maria, born in 1946; and another son, born in 1952.
Lovallo experienced the loss of one of his children when his son Vincenzo died after suffering from meningitis just months after being born. His wife also passed away from leukaemia in 2015 at the age of 98.
During World War II, Lovallo was sent to the front and was captured by German troops in Greece in 1943.
He was initially held on the Greek island of Rhodes before being transferred to Germany, where he was imprisoned at the Stalag VIII C camp until Russian troops liberated him in May 1945.
During his captivity, Lovallo was forced to perform hard labour, including work on the construction of a railway.
After returning home following the war, he worked as a muleteer and continued working on the land for several decades.
Following the death of Michele Cicora on March 31, 2024, Lovallo became Italy’s oldest living man. He also became the first male from the Basilicata region to reach the age of 110.
After Romania’s Ilie Ciocan died on May 27, 2026, Lovallo became Europe’s oldest living man.
He died on September 15, 2026, at the age of 112, bringing to an end the life of a man who had lived through two World Wars, witnessed generations of change and survived years of hardship during wartime.