Can’t Get To Naples? Here’s How To Have Italy’s Best Pizza Delivered To Your Door

01.09.2023 - 02:47 / forbes.com

Post-pandemic “revenge travel” is in full swing, and tourists are flocking to Italy in droves like never before: with the country poised to break all tourism records in 2023, visitors–especially from the U.S.–are expected to beeline to Italy over other European destinations for the foreseeable future, to revel in the ineffable magic of la dolce vita.

One destination that’s having a distinct moment? Naples, the gritty, iconic capital of the Campania region, perched on the glittering Gulf of Naples in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius–arguably the world’s most famous volcano–and the gateway to the incomparable Amalfi Coast, a perennial Italian tourism center. Thanks in part to HBO’s adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s acclaimed Neapolitan Novels, as well as some recent cultural coups–including the opening of the new site of the renowned Galleria d’Italia Naples last summer–the long-overlooked city is returning to its Grand Tour heyday, and once again attracting discerning international travelers keen to explore its complex and myriad charms.

Founded around 600 BCE as Neapolis (“New City”) by the Greeks, Naples, like all great ancient cities, is one steeped in legend and lore. Case in point: the city’s oldest castle, the 12^th-century Castel dell’Ovo–literally “castle of the egg”–owes its name to the Roman poet Virgil, who is said to have buried a magical egg deep in the fortress’s foundation. The tale was as simple as it was full of foreboding: if the egg stayed intact, Naples would remain safe from all catastrophes–but should it break, the castle, and the city itself, would fall. If Naples’s ongoing renaissance and the castle’s status as one of its most popular tourist attractions are any indication, the plucky egg endures.

But there’s no more compelling Neapolitan narrative–or source of civic pride–than the story of its pizza, which enjoys deity status in this seaside metropolis, its birthplace and spiritual homeland. While the original fast food’s roots reach back to the flat, hearth-baked breads of the Greeks and Etruscans, Italy’s earliest settlers, the arrival of the tomato–which Spanish conquistadores brought to Europe in the mid-16^th century from the New World, where the Aztecs called the plant “tomati”–charted the course of pizza’s evolution from the early 1700s as a distinctly Italian invention.

Its official birth arguably dates back to 1889, when Queen Margherita of Savoy, consort of Italy’s then-king, Umberto I, observed Naples’s poor eating pizza in the streets. Intrigued and reportedly tired of courtly cuisine, she summoned the city’s most famous pizzaiolo (pizza maker), Raffaele Esposito, who made her three of his celebrated creations. Her favorite bore the colors of the national flag, adopted upon