Italy Tour: Naples in a Day? Pizza!

Can you visit Naples on an Italy Tour in a single day? Yes, but you are required by law to eat pizza while there.

I went to Naples by mistake (see my funny story here), but while there, I had some pizza; it was invented there.

Very popular there is the Pizza Margherita, named after Queen Margherita of Savoy (France) during her visit to Naples. According to a popular tradition, Margherita, wife of King Umberto I, came to Naples in 1889, some twenty-eight years after the unification of Italy, and met Chef Raffaele Esposito and his wife. They created it at the restaurant Pizzeria Brandi, which is still there. They named the pizza dish in honor of Queen Margherita.

It’s made with white cheese, red marinara sauce, and green basil, like the three colors of the Italian flag.

This dish, made with naturally leavened dough, is stretched and spun into a disk, drizzled with extra virgin olive oil, and baked in a wood-burning, dome-shaped oven.

History of Pizza

Pizza goes back to the time of the Etruscans, who settled in northern Italy and later down to Campania in the 8th century B.C. Think of them as the Iron Age precursors to the Romans, with whom they later fought in the 4th century B.C.