One of the most important things for a majority of travellers who choose to vacation in Italy is the food. The country is impossibly famous for it and for good reason. Classic Italian dishes form a backbone of the diet of people all over the world today due to the simple and often inexpensive ingredients and rich flavours that come from this cuisine steeped in hearty peasant cooking traditions. However, it’s not simply pretentious to say that the Italian food in Italy hits different, it is a fact. So, if you really love Italian food then you need to book a villa in Italy and head there for a holiday to start sampling the authentic version for yourself.
When it comes to particular dishes, each region has its own specialities and strengths but you’ll often also find that the mainstays are great no matter where you go. Take, for example, pizza. You’re sure to find great pizza in pizzerias and restaurants all over the country. But if you're a serious pizza-lover looking to really do it justice and experience it in its birthplace, Naples and Rome are the key destinations that you’ll want to keep in mind.
Naples, located in the region of Campania, to the south of Italy, is often credited as the birthplace of pizza. The exact origins are up for debate by food historians, but the modern version of pizza that we know today evolved in Naples in the 18th and 19th centuries. One popular origin tale involves Queen Margherita of Italy, who was served a pizza with tomato sauce, basil, and mozzarella in Naples in 1889, supposedly to represent the colours of the Italian flag. This is now a representative pizza and a good barometer for pizza restaurants; if they can get this simple classic right, they’re probably doing a good job overall.
There are also some slight regional variations that you can expect. On vacation in Naples, the pizza that you’ll be served will have a thicker, fluffier crust and be smaller in diameter while on holiday in Rome, you'll find that the pizzas are generally larger, paper-thin, crispy, and less filling. Both are perfectly suited to enjoying on a stay in one of our villas in Italy and spending days exploring these wonderful parts of the country, before filling up with some pizza and a beer or a glass of wine while sitting outside a restaurant in a pretty piazza and watching the world go by...