The Caprotti family and their centre: the Villa San Valerio in Albiate
Albiate is where the Caprotti family built its fortunes. The house was more than just a dwelling. Even today, you only have to walk down through the fields for no more than five hundred metres and, past the bridge over the Lambro river, you arrive at the abandoned textile factory that once made their wealth possible.
Giuseppe Caprotti and his studies: Paris and the meaning of research
.. do I want to stay among books and archive documents, alone, seeing no one or almost no one, for long days? Or do I want to work confronting the real world every day? The answer would come years later; teaching I would have liked. But even the balance of my experience 'in the real world', as Kundera writes, will not have been 'a dream': Esselunga was a great passion, I had fun and I did, to use an Anglicism, 'good things'.
Bernardo Caprotti and Giorgio Della Seta: the ‘duel’ of 1957
The great thing about this story is that a beautiful friendship was born with Marco Della Seta, Giorgio's son, in Paris in the 1980s.
New Princes will buy Carrefour Italia supermarkets: the difference between cheer and reality
One cannot improvise as a retailer and, above all, it is not always the case that aggregating several realities, with different cultures, brings strength: the acquisition of Newlat reminds me of the events of Standa and those of Auchan-Conad, but also of the Carrefour- Promodes merger or the events of Walgreens with Boots. Not to mention the lesson of the bankruptcy of Sears or that of the closure of Dominick’s for manifest incompetence
Gianni Albertini: his example and memory today
On 18 March 2025, the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan hosted an event dedicated to Gianni Albertini and his 1929 HEIMEN-SUCAI Arctic expedition. I discovered that his example of human and scientific expedition is still valid today: the PolarQuest Association demonstrated this with its expeditions on the route of the airship Italia on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the expedition, and I myself was able to experience last year, as a simple tourist, what it means to be in places that speak to the soul.
Gianni Albertini: the documentary of the expedition, revealing ice and people
On 18 March 2025, the Leonardo da Vinci National Museum of Science and Technology in Milan hosted an event dedicated to Gianni Albertini and his 1929 HEIMEN-SUCAI Arctic expedition. During the event, documentary filmmaker Christian Cinetto presented the footage that cinematographer Umberto della Valle shot during the months of the journey, which not only captures testimonies but also the emotions and personalities of the protagonists.
Gianni Albertini: The Arctic Expedition in Search of the Missing of the Noble Expedition (1929)
Gianni Albertini had experienced at first hand, as a member of the expedition, the tragedy of the airship Italia, which had crashed into the North Pole pack in the spring of 1928, and of six crewmen who had remained in the airship's envelope, disappeared in the fog and were never found again. He feels obliged to search for the missing, encouraged by their relatives. The expedition is prepared with an organisational speed that is astonishing even by today's standards, less than three months, and according to criteria of particular efficiency and intelligence.
Gianni Albertini: supporting the Dirigibile Italia expedition (1928)
In the spring of 1928, the airship 'Italia' expedition, commanded by Colonel Umberto Nobile, set off. The aim was to fly over the North Pole for the first time with a precise programme of geographical exploration and scientific research. Unfortunately, the enterprise ended in a dramatic shipwreck, which mobilised a gigantic chain of rescue operations in which Gianni Albertini, one of the most experienced mountaineers and mountain guides, also took part. He experienced the drama first-hand and knew the Arctic for the first time.
Gianni Albertini: mountaineer, explorer and husband of great-aunt Ida Quintavalle
Gianni (Gianni) Albertini graduated in engineering at a very young age and became such an expert in rock, mountains and snow that he opened several new routes to the summit of Mont Blanc in the 1920s. An adventurous flyer (he tried to break the record for flying between London and Cape Town in 1938), he owes his fame to the Heimen-Sucai Arctic expedition of 1929, set up to search for those missing from the Nobile expedition the year before. He married Ida Quintavalle, twin sister of my maternal grandmother Luisa Quintavalle.
The Caprotti marriages: Claudio and Paola Albera
A decade after the two older brothers, Claudio also got married, marrying Paola Albera in Florence in 1968. A 1970s-style ceremony, the bride in a short yellow dress, the groom in a simple light-coloured suit, the church full of daisies, but this third marriage too, after the birth of Andrea and Fabrizio, would end in divorce, leaving Paola with her beloved Villa Nadina in Forte dei Marmi.
