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 (1873-1933).