A History of Pizza: From Ancient Flatbreads to the First Pizzerias
Pizza’s appeal is simple—and its past is long
Pizza is often treated as a modern comfort food: quick, shareable, endlessly customizable. Yet when you strip it down to its essentials—bread made flat, topped with ingredients, then cooked—it becomes part of a much older human habit. People have been baking flatbreads for millennia, and for just as long they have found ways to eat them with flavorful additions.
What makes pizza history tricky is that the dish did not appear fully formed. Instead, it emerged through a long chain of “almost pizzas”: flatbreads eaten with onions, garlic, cheese, herbs, oils, and other toppings; breads used as edible plates; and regional baked goods that resemble pizza in technique or shape but not in the exact combination we recognize today. The result is a story that moves from archaeology to literature, from ancient kitchens to bustling port cities, and from street vendors to the first pizzerias.
Before pizza: the deep history of flatbread
The oldest part of pizza’s family tree is flatbread itself. Archaeologists working at the Shubayqa 1 site in the Black Desert of northeast Jordan discovered charred remains of flatbread that date back about 14,400 years. The finding is striking not only for its age but also for what it suggests about early food culture. The lead author of the research commented that bread predates agriculture by at least 4,000 years in the Levant, meaning the relationship between bread-making and the origins of farming may need to be reconsidered.
This ancient bread was not “pizza,” of course. Still, it is easy to imagine how a flat surface of baked dough could invite additions: oil, herbs, olives, or other ingredients placed on top. The basic idea—bread plus toppings, cooked and eaten by hand—feels like a distant ancestor of the slice.
Flatbread later became a staple in ancient Egypt. Evidence from tomb paintings and records indicates Egyptians were making flatbread at least 5,000 years ago. Some accounts suggest it was eaten with toppings such as onions and garlic, and possibly even cheese. Those details bring the concept tantalizingly close to what many people now think of as pizza’s core pleasures: a warm base with savory, aromatic additions.
Ancient descriptions of how Egyptians made bread can be vivid, if not always reliable. Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE) wrote that Egyptians kneaded dough with their feet. Yet paintings show kneading done by hand, suggesting that at least some of his account was invented or exaggerated. The broader point remains: bread-making was widespread, and methods varied, but the foundation for later flatbread dishes was firmly in place.
Edible plates and literary prophecies: flatbread as a “table”
For thousands of years, and well into the late Middle Ages in Europe, flatbreads were used as a practical substitute for plates. Cooked food would be placed on top; the bread would soak up juices and sauces; then it would be eaten. This is not pizza in the modern sense, but it shows how naturally toppings and bread can merge into a single meal.
That dining practice even appears in a famous story connected to the siege of Troy (c. 1250 BCE), at least through later literature. In Virgil’s Aeneid (c. 29 BCE), Calaeno, queen of the Harpies, foretells that the Trojans will not find peace until hunger forces them to eat their tables. In Book VII, Aeneas and his men prepare flatbreads topped with cooked vegetables. When they eat the bread itself, they realize they have eaten their “tables,” fulfilling the prophecy. The scene is memorable because it treats bread not merely as accompaniment but as the base that carries the meal—an idea that resonates with pizza’s later role as a complete, portable food.
Separating legend from evidence
Pizza history attracts colorful claims, and not all of them hold up. One popular story says Persian soldiers under Darius the Great (c. 550–486 BCE) baked flatbreads on heated shields, sometimes adding cheese and dates. The problem is that no vaguely contemporaneous sources are offered to support it, and it appears likely to be a later invention. The impulse behind the story is understandable—soldiers, heat, bread, and toppings make for a compelling origin tale—but the lack of evidence matters if we are trying to trace pizza’s development responsibly.
What can be stated with more confidence is that baking and bread culture were firmly established in the ancient Mediterranean world, including Rome, where written sources provide more concrete culinary detail.
Ancient Rome’s cheese bread: close, but not quite pizza
From Marcus Cato’s On Agriculture (c. 160 BCE) comes a recipe for libum, a cheese bread that sits somewhere between a loaf and a cake. The method is precise: thoroughly bray two pounds of cheese, mix in wheat flour (with an option for fine flour for a more delicate result), add an egg, work it well, pat it into a loaf, place it on leaves, and bake slowly on a warm hearth under a crock.
Libum is not pizza, but it demonstrates something important: the combination of dough and dairy was already a familiar pleasure, and the techniques of shaping and baking were sophisticated. When later pizza makers in Naples paired dough with cheese and other toppings, they were building on a long tradition of bread as a platform for richer ingredients.
When does “pizza” begin? A word appears before the modern dish
Pinpointing the first “real pizza” is difficult. The honest answer is that we do not know exactly when pizza as we recognize it first arose. Interestingly, one of the earliest recipes resembling today’s topped flatbreads comes not from Italy but from France. A document from Provence dated 879 describes a pissaladière as a leavened flatbread topped with onions, olives, and anchovies.
The word “pizza” itself is recorded in a charter from the town of Gaeta in southern Italy dated 997, more than a thousand years ago. In the Latin text, “duodecim pizze” appears as part of a rental payment owed to a local bishop, alongside coins due on specific feast days. The context is striking: the first appearance of the word comes in a practical, transactional setting. It is easy to smile at the idea that pizza enters the written record as something delivered or owed—food as obligation, not just indulgence.
Still, this early “pizza” was likely closer to focaccia than to the modern Neapolitan round topped with tomato and mozzarella. The dough may have been proved and risen similarly to contemporary pizza dough, but the resemblance probably ended there.
Focaccia, regional variations, and the slow approach to the modern form
By the 16th century, references make clear that “pizza” could be used as a local name for focaccia-style bread. Benedetto di Falco, writing in 1535 about the cuisine of Naples, stated that “Focaccia in Neapolitan is called pizza.” This matters because it suggests the word’s meaning was flexible: it could refer to a type of baked bread rather than a specific topped dish.
Regional Italian foods also occupied a middle ground. In Liguria, a dish known as sardenaira (often called pizza all’Andrea, after Admiral Andrea Doria, 1466–1560) was topped with olive oil, garlic, anchovies, and capers. It reads like a bridge between focaccia and modern pizza: leavened dough with assertive toppings, but not yet the canonical Neapolitan combination most people picture today.
Naples in the 18th century: the conditions that made modern pizza
To reach truly modern pizza, the story turns to Naples in the 18th century. This was a bustling port city with a largely working-class population living in crowded conditions. Many people lived in cramped buildings that often lacked cooking facilities. The need was clear: cheap food that could be eaten on the go. Pizza fit that need perfectly.
A detailed glimpse of Neapolitan pizza culture appears in a 1789 work titled Collezione di tutti i poemi in lingua Napoletena, which is described as more like an elaborate dictionary than a book of poems. It lists a variety of pizza-type items under the generic name pizzella, noting that adjectives were added to distinguish different kinds. The list includes fried pizza and numerous other variations—evidence that by this point “pizza” in Naples referred to a broad family of foods rather than a single standardized recipe.
The same passage discusses etymology, proposing a link to Latin terms such as pistus and related words associated with stirring dough. It also notes that Italians called these pizzas schiacciate—things “squashed” by hand—because the simplest versions were little more than dough crushed between the hands and seasoned before being cooked in a pan or oven.
Notably, the text remarks that some monasteries of nuns were “illustrious” for certain pizzas, and then laments—almost teasingly—that it did not include recipes. The author frames cooking as part of “Chemistry” and therefore too simple a science to detail in a vocabulary of names. For anyone hungry for specifics, it is a frustrating omission.
Pizza as everyday economics: Alexandre Dumas in Naples
One of the most vivid first-hand accounts of Neapolitan pizza comes from Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), who traveled to the city in 1835. Dumas describes pizza as central to the diet of the lower classes, arguing that their necessities matched their desires. What did a working Neapolitan want to eat? A pizza.
He emphasizes affordability and variety. A pizza of two farthings could suffice for one person; a pizza of two sous could satisfy a whole family. What looked simple at first proved “compound” upon inspection: pizzas could be prepared with bacon, lard, cheese, tomatoes, and fish.
Dumas also offers a striking metaphor: pizza as a “gastronomic thermometer of the market.” Prices rose and fell with the abundance or scarcity of ingredients. A cheap fish pizza suggested good fishing; a more expensive oil pizza suggested a poor olive yield. Even freshness affected price. Dumas notes that yesterday’s pizza would not cost the same as today’s, and that those with “small purses” could buy pizza a week old, which might not be pleasant but could advantageously replace sea-biscuit. In his telling, pizza is not only food but a small economic system—responsive to harvests, markets, and the realities of working life.
Pizza reaches English readers—and not everyone likes what they see
The earliest reference found to pizza in an English newspaper dates to the London Morning Post on 22 December 1860. The report calls pizza a favorite Neapolitan delicacy, made and eaten between sunset and the early hours of the morning. It states that pizza must be baked in five minutes and served piping hot at the moment it is ordered—otherwise it is “not worth a grano.”
The same piece describes preparation in sensory detail. A baker takes a ball of dough, kneads it, spreads it by hand to about half the thickness of a muffin, then adds mozzarella (described as rich cream beaten almost like a cream cheese), grated cheese, herbs, and tomato. After five minutes in the oven, it is served as hot as possible. A “perfect pizza,” the correspondent insists, must have an outside crust with a certain “orthodox crispness.”
By this point, pizza is portrayed as a social leveler. The correspondent writes that at that season there is “no person, high or low” in Naples for whom eating pizza is not a kind of primary article of faith. In pizza shops, rich and poor congregate; even members of the aristocracy might be seen eating beside coachmen, valets, and barbers.
Yet the same report includes a harsh judgment on hygiene, claiming that pizza shops were “about the filthiest in Naples,” generally located in the meanest alleys and most disreputable quarters. The line is memorable not only for its insult but because it underlines pizza’s street-level origins: popular, crowded, inexpensive, and not always refined in the eyes of outsiders.
From street selling to the pizzeria: keeping pizza warm and paying later
Early Neapolitan pizza sellers often baked pies in wood-fired ovens and then took them out to sell on the street. That created a practical problem: how to keep pizza warm while moving through the city. One described solution is ingenious and a little startling: vendors would coil wet towels on their heads, balance a small coal stove on top, and stash the pizza above the stove.
Over time, pizza shifted from something bought on the street to something eaten seated indoors. A key name in this transition is Antica Pizzeria Port’Alba in Naples. Founded as a food stand in 1738, it opened what is generally considered the world’s first pizzeria in 1830, using lava rocks from Mount Vesuvius to line its ovens. It became a gathering place for students and intellectuals—customers not always known for having much money—so the business introduced a payment system called pizza an otto, allowing diners to pay up to eight days later. The pizzeria remains open today.
Pizza crosses the Atlantic: immigrants and the first American shops
Italian immigrants brought pizza to America during the 19th century. For decades, they made it at home before dedicated pizza establishments appeared. A pioneer among American pizzerias was Filippo Milone, who probably arrived in the United States in 1892. In 1898 he opened a bakery and grocery at 53½ Spring Street in New York and began selling pizzas not long afterward, eventually establishing another five restaurants in the city.
Milone’s role, however, has often been overshadowed. A staff member, Gennaro Lombardi—born in Italy in 1887—arrived in New York in November 1904 and began working at the Spring Street location. He appears to have acquired it in 1908. Later renamed “Lombardi’s” in 1939, it has been claimed as the first pizza restaurant in the United States. The history is more complicated: the business may have been first under that later identity, but Lombardi did not found it.
Milone’s story ends quietly. He died childless in 1920 and is buried in an unmarked grave in Queens, his contributions largely forgotten. Even so, his work helped build a business that has since grown into a global industry with sales exceeding $150 billion a year.
What pizza’s history reveals
Pizza’s evolution is not a straight line from one inventor to a single “first” recipe. It is a gradual convergence of old habits—baking flatbread, eating bread with toppings, using bread as a base for a meal—shaped by the needs of particular places and people. Naples in the 18th century provided the social and economic conditions that made modern pizza feel inevitable: dense neighborhoods, limited cooking facilities, and demand for inexpensive food that could be eaten quickly.
From there, pizza became both more democratic and more portable. It moved from street vendors balancing heat on their heads to pizzerias lined with volcanic stone; from local cash-strapped diners paying “in eight days” to immigrant entrepreneurs selling pies in New York. The dish’s global popularity is often explained by taste alone, but its history also reflects practicality: pizza has long been a way to turn simple dough into a complete meal.
A few key milestones in pizza’s long timeline
14,400 years ago: Charred flatbread remains found at Shubayqa 1 in northeast Jordan.
At least 5,000 years ago: Flatbread is a staple in ancient Egypt, sometimes eaten with onions, garlic, and possibly cheese.
160 BCE (approx.): Cato records a recipe for libum, a baked cheese bread.
879: A Provençal document describes pissaladière, a leavened flatbread with onions, olives, and anchovies.
997: The word “pizza” appears in a charter from Gaeta as part of a rental payment.
18th century: Naples becomes the cradle of modern pizza as cheap, portable food.
1830: Port’Alba opens what is generally considered the world’s first pizzeria.
1898: Filippo Milone opens a bakery/grocery in New York and begins selling pizza, expanding to multiple locations.
Pizza’s story is, in the end, a story of continuity: ancient bread traditions meeting the realities of city life, then traveling with migrants and adapting to new markets. The toppings may change, the ovens may evolve, and the business models may scale—but the core idea remains remarkably durable: a hot, satisfying meal built on a simple piece of baked dough.