Pizza, as we know it today, originates from Naples in southern Italy, where modern pizza developed in the 18th–19th centuries as a simple street food for working-class people.

Quick Scoop: Where Pizza Comes From

Ancient flatbreads vs. real “pizza”

People were eating flatbreads with toppings long before Italy became famous for pizza.

  • Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and Romans all had flatbreads topped with oils, herbs, onions, cheese, or dates.
  • These early dishes looked a bit like pizza, but they were not yet the tomato-and-cheese pies we think of today.

So you can say: topped flatbreads are ancient , but “pizza” in the modern sense is much newer and specifically Italian.

Birthplace of modern pizza

Modern pizza took shape in Naples, Italy.

  • Between the 18th and 19th centuries, Neapolitan street vendors sold cheap flatbreads with simple toppings to feed the urban poor.
  • Tomatoes (a New World ingredient) were added on top of yeast dough, then baked quickly in hot ovens, creating something very close to today’s pizza.

Most historians treat Naples as the true birthplace of modern pizza —especially the classic Neapolitan styles.

The famous Margherita story

One of the most iconic early pizzas is the Margherita.

  • It’s topped with tomato (red), mozzarella (white), and basil (green), often said to mirror the Italian flag.
  • A popular story links it to Queen Margherita of Savoy, who supposedly tasted and favored this combination in Naples, helping cement pizza’s status as a national dish.

Whether every detail of the legend is perfectly accurate or not, Margherita pizza is tightly tied to Naples and to the idea of “real” Italian pizza.

From Naples to the rest of the world

Once established in Naples, pizza began to travel.

  • Italian immigrants carried pizza to other parts of Europe and especially to the United States.
  • By the early 1900s, pizzerias were opening in American cities with large Italian communities, and from there pizza spread into a global favorite.

Today, styles like New York, Chicago, Neapolitan, and many more all trace their roots back to those early pizzas in Naples, Italy.

TL;DR: Ancient peoples invented topped flatbreads, but pizza in the modern sense originates in Naples, Italy , where it evolved in the 18th–19th centuries into the tomato-and-cheese dish that conquered the world.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.