Pizza wasn’t invented in one moment. Flatbreads with toppings have been cooked all over the Mediterranean for thousands of years. But the dish we now call pizza - a thin round dough baked with tomato and cheese - comes from the city of Naples in southern Italy in the 1700s.
In the 1800s, Naples was full of poor families who needed cheap, filling food they could grab on the go. Street bakers turned out cheap pizzas topped with tomato, garlic, and oil. The most famous pizzeria of the time, Brandi, claims a pizza maker named Raffaele Esposito created a new pizza in 1889 for Queen Margherita of Italy’s visit.
Esposito topped a pizza with red tomato sauce, white mozzarella, and green basil leaves to match the colors of the Italian flag. The queen loved it, and the Pizza Margherita was born. Today UNESCO officially protects “the art of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo” as part of the world’s cultural heritage.
