Guido Venosta – Childhood, education and football
Grandfather Guido was born on October 3, 1911, in Milan, to Giuseppe—who “graduated with full honors from the Politecnico di Milano, from which he went on to embark on the great tire adventure at Pirelli in Italy” (eventually becoming one of its general directors)—and Argia Neri. For him, as a child living on via Vittor Pisani, then very close to “La Brusada,” the old Pirelli factory, nothing existed from the “big world out there”: there was only Pirelli with its elongated “P” and, indirectly, FIAT, which needed tires to hit the road (VENOSTA, Memorie, p. 2).
His first school, as was the case for his two brothers, Ferruccio and Giorgio, was the Istituto Vittoria Colonna on via Conservatorio. For his middle school years—then divided between lower gymnasium (middle school) and upper gymnasium (high school)—he attended the renowned Parini Classical Lyceum, which at the time was housed in the Collegio Longone premises, now the headquarters of the Questura on via Senato.
Little Guido played football passionately on the fields of piazza Caiazzo. On those fields, one often encountered genuine players—some of whom worked at Pirelli—and all of them played for a then-young AC Milan. Among the club’s founders in 1899 was one of the two Pirelli brothers, Piero, who not only played for the team but assumed its presidency in 1909, holding the position for an impressive 28 years. It was always Piero who gifted his team—and the city—with a true stadium: San Siro, inaugurated in 1926.
Sometimes, on the piazza Caiazzo pitch, Giuseppe Venosta would also appear, and “being ‘heavy’ and impetuous, he was greatly feared by us little forwards…” (Ibid., p. 11).
Football, and AC Milan in particular, have long been a cherished sporting tradition in the family. Just as little Guido grew up admiring his footballing idols on his favorite team, so too did Giuseppe Caprotti have the chance to know his childhood heroes. Life’s historical twists are many: Leopoldo Pirelli, son of Piero, remained until his death a companion of Rosellina Archinto—a woman of immense character and one of the “grande dames” of Italian publishing, whom Giuseppe knew well as she was a close friend of his mother, Giorgina; it was she, serving as a Milan city councilor, who officiated his marriage to Laura in 1992.
Sources:
Albiate, Villa San Valerio Archives, Guido Venosta Archive, G. VENOSTA, Unpublished Memoirs (1996-97).
Piero Pirelli, entry on https://www.magliarossonera.it/protagonisti/PRES/Pres-PirelliI.html.
