Was the first pizza eaten in Pompeii? Archaeologists claim to have discovered the precursor to Italy's favourite dish. Photo / Supplied, Scavi di Pompeii Heritage Site; Italian Ministry of Culture
Was the first pizza eaten in Pompeii? Archaeologists claim to have discovered the precursor to Italy's favourite dish. Photo / Supplied, Scavi di Pompeii Heritage Site; Italian Ministry of Culture
The petrified city of Pompeii might be the origin of Italy’s famed, stonebaked delicacy.
Archaeologists working in the Roman city in the Bay of Naples claim to have uncovered a painting showing the earliest known depiction of a ‘pizza’.
The 2,000-year-old fresco shows a baked flatbread with toppings that the Italian Ministry of Culture claims could be “a distant ancestor of the modern dish”.
This is a bold claim. Particularly because the tomato - a crucial ingredient - wouldn’t arrive in Europe for another 1500 years. The fruit “pomodoro” didn’t arrive in Italy from the Americas until at least 1544, with botanist Pietro Andrea Matthioli.
Still, historians argue the dish depicted may be a precursor to the famous delicacy.
The picture is a slice in the jigsaw of where the pizza came from.
It was discovered earlier this year on the wall of a house next to a recent excavation at Regio IX, in the central Roman city. It was next to a building known to be a bakery, with stone ovens.
The painting was found in a quarter of the city which was never fully excavated. Large sections of the ancient Roman city remain buried by volcanic matter after the eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79AD.
So it’s quite a surprise to find such a recognisable dish painted on the plasterwork, said archaeologists at the Unesco World Heritage park.
The bread appears on a table with what archaeologists identified as pesto, spices, a pomegranate and a cup of wine.
A man shows off a pizza cooked in a stone oven which was used in 1889 to make the first Pizza Margherita in Naples, Italy. Photo / Ciro Fusco, AP
A roundabout history of Pizza
It “obviously can’t be [a pizza]”, said the directors for the heritage park, but the food is a source of pride for Italy.
The Neapolitan pizza is said to date back to 1889, when Raffaele Esposito created the “Pizza Margherita” for Queen Margherita in Naples. The red, white and green ingredients of the patriotic dish reflected the flag of the recently unified Italy.
Director-general of the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, who identified several other foods represented in the image, suggested that flatbreads may have been around in Greek and Italian cooking traditions far longer than first thought.
“Pompeii never ceases to amaze; it is a chest that always reveals new treasures,” said Gennaro Sangiuliano, Italian minister of culture.
“How can we not think about pizza, also born as a ‘poor’ dish in southern Italy that has now conquered the world and is served in Michelin-star restaurants?”
In 2017, the Neapolitan Pizza became a protected inclusion on the Unesco World Heritage list along with the “traditional art of the Neapolitan pizza chef”.
