Guido Monzino
Count Guido Monzino was a twentieth-century Italian mountain climber and explorer. In 1973 he led the first Italian expedition to climb Mount Everest. He was the son of Franco Monzino who founded the Italian supermarket chain Standa.Life
Monzino was born on 2 March 1928 in Milan. In his early twenties he climbed the Matterhorn. Subsequently he made a total of 21 expeditions to places including Patagonia, Equatorial Africa, Greenland, the North Pole and the Himalaya, and sometimes following in the footsteps of the famous explorer and mountaineer Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi.
Monzino died of lung cancer on 11 October 1988. He was interred at the Villa del Balbianello on the banks of Lake Como, which he bought in 1974 from the heirs of Butler Ames. Monzino willed Villa del Balbianello to the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano.
The villa today contains a museum devoted to Monzino which includes artifacts acquired on his expeditions including Inuit sculpture, as well as memorabilia including one of the dog sleds from his 1971 expedition to the North Pole, and Monzino’s extensive collections of maps and books.Expeditions
