Luigia Petillo
A Life of Passions

From the garage to the kitchen there are 60 steps, and she walks them 5-6 times a day. Luigia Petillo, 89 (born May 6, 1930), enjoys being on the move, her sport is to take care of the house and walk around. Traveling is her passion because during trips you never stop discovering and learning.

At 16 she got engaged, and she married the same man at 26, spending 40 long and intense years together in Naples, where her husband worked, and San Mauro Cilento, her homeland. A strong love that was interrupted only by his death. She likes to repeat as a dogma that she has been married for 10 years and engaged for 40 years, as the freshness of their love grew even stronger over time.

Luigia parents both led a long life; her father at 103 had the desire to buy a piano to continue to follow his inclination to play musical instruments by ear, a gift he always had. Luigia hates fertilizers and in her garden she just puts manure as she has learned the lesson of her father who cultivated olives, fruit and vegetables without chemical substances.

There are three foods Luigia loves: broccoli rabe, artichokes and margherita pizza. Her weakness are sweets and ice cream, since childhood; with a hint of pride she remembers the days when as a child she was stealing from the pantry whole pieces of sugar escaping her mother’s no. She also remembers fondly the arrival of pasticelle, sweet fried dough stuffed with almonds or chestnuts, that marked the beginning of Christmas.