+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox “My family is keeping the details a secret from me. But I’m sure there will be lots of love, laughter, music and good food,” she said in the “Corriere della Sera”, according to the “Blick”. “Switzerland is and remains my home,” Loren enthused about her adopted country, adding: “In Geneva, I find joy in small things.
I spend my time thinking, reading and writing.” Since the 1980s, Loren has mostly lived in her villa in Geneva due to her husband Carlo Ponti’s poor health. Geneva became her main residence in 1981.
The fact that Loren is so attached to Switzerland has nothing to do with her career, but with her as a mother. Loren and Ponti, who discovered her at the Miss Rome pageant in 1950, married in 1957. It was a long time before the longed-for offspring arrived.
“I had wanted children since I was 16. I had Carlo Jr. at 34, Edoardo at 38.
You can imagine how I suffered,” says the actress. After two miscarriages in 1963 and 1967, she was about to give up hope. But then she consulted Hubert de Watteville, then Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Geneva.
He diagnosed her with oestrogen deficiency and treated her successfully. Sophia Loren’s first son was born by caesarean section on December 29, 1968. Four years later, the professor also helped her with the birth of Edoardo.
The latter later became a director, Carlo Ponti Jr. a conductor. Born Sofia Villani Scicolo.