Pizza - pieces of flatbread, topped with savories - was a simple and tasty meal for those who could not afford plates.

• Early pizzas appear in Virgil's Aeneid. Aeneas and his crew ate thin wheaten cakes with mushrooms and herbs scattered on them.


• In the 18th century Naples, pizza as we know it came into being. With a struggling urban economy and a great number of poor inhabitants, they needed food that was cheap and easy to eat. Pizza met this need.