Ms Morano’s doctor of 27 years, Carlo Bava, was called to her home in the northern Italian town of Verbania after her caretaker noticed that she had stopped breathing while lounging in her armchair on Saturday afternoon.
“I'm happy she didn't suffer but passed away that way, tranquilly," Dr Bava said.
Born in Civiasco, Piedmont on November 29, 1899, Ms Morano put her longevity down to genetics and a diet of three eggs, two of them raw, a day.
She maintained this diet for more than 90 years since she was diagnosed with amnesia at the age of 20.
During her lifetime, Ms Morano lived through two World Wars, worked in a jute factory and boldly decided, in 1938, to separate from a violent husband shortly after the death of their infant son, becoming one of the first in Italy to do so.
In an interview with Italian daily La Stampa five years ago, Ms Morano recalled that her fiancé and the love of her life died in WWI and that she was then forced into a marriage with a man she didn’t love.
"'Either you agree to marry me or I will kill you'," Ms Morano said, reiterating her ex-husband’s proposal.
Ms Morano remained single for the rest of her life and was kept company during her final years by a caretaker and two elderly nieces.
She became the world's oldest living person last year after the previous holder of her title, American woman Susannah Mushatt Jones, died in New York aged 116.
According to the US-based Gerontology Research Group (GRG), the world's oldest registered human is now Jamaican woman Violet Brown, who was born on March 10, 1900.
