Although the ancient Egyptians, Romans, and Greeks consumed flatbread with toppings, the modern pizza home is the Campania region of southwestern Italy, home to Naples. Founded around 600 BC as a Greek settlement, Naples in the 18th and early 19th centuries was a waterfront thriving city. Technically, it was an independent kingdom, famous for its crowds of poor workers, or lazaroni. These Neapolitans needed inexpensive food that could be consumed quickly. Pizza—flatbread with toppings that can be eaten at every meal—fulfilled this need. These early pizzas featured savory toppings such as tomatoes, cheese, oil, anchovies, and garlic. Wealthier Italian authors considered a Neapolitan innovation, often describing their eating habits as disgusting.
In 1861, Italy was finally united, and King Umberto I and Queen Margherita visited Naples in 1889. Legend has it that the traveling couple got bored with their steady diet of French cuisine and ordered a variety of pizzas from the city's Brandy Pizzeria, which was founded in 1760. The variety The one the Queen enjoyed most was called pizza mozzarella, a pie topped with soft white cheese, red tomatoes, and green basil—much like an Italian flag. Since then, this particular selection of toppings has been called the Margherita pizza.
However, even with the Queen's love of the dish, pizza remained unknown in Italy beyond the borders of Naples until the 1940s. Across the sea, immigrants to the United States from Naples were replicating their flatbreads in New York and other American cities. They'd come for the factory jobs but made a statement with their cooking. Relatively quickly, the textures and flavors of pizza began to interest non-Napolitans and non-Italians.
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