The first thing to know about World Pizza Day is that Naples did not import it. The city was already celebrating on January 17 long before the rest of the world heard about it. The pizzaioli have a patron saint. His feast day is January 17. That is the whole story.
Who is Sant'Antonio Abate?
Sant'Antonio Abate, Saint Anthony the Abbot, was a 3rd century Egyptian monk who spent decades in the desert and ended up patronizing, in Italian folk tradition, every trade that works with fire. The popular story, told in Naples for centuries, has him traveling to hell with a small pig to steal flames and bring them back to people. That is why on January 17 the city blesses farm animals and lights public bonfires, and it is why the pizzaiolo, whose entire trade is a fire he has to control, took the saint as his own.
The other patron saints of Naples handle plagues, harbors, and lost causes. Sant'Antuono, in the Neapolitan rendering, handles ovens.
The cippo and the Capodimonte bonfire
Around the middle of the 20th century, the pizzaioli of Naples started gathering in Capodimonte on the saint's day and lighting what locals call a cippo, a public bonfire built from old furniture, palettes, and Christmas-tree scraps. The pizzaiuolo families pinned a picture of Sant'Antonio Abate to their ovens and burned a torch through the night. That image, the saint above the oven mouth, is what you still see in older shops that have not painted over the soot.
The ritual was a working-class one. It did not belong to a guild or to a tourism office. It was simply how the people who spent their lives in front of a 485°C wood oven thanked the saint who, in their telling, had given them the fire in the first place.
How January 17 became official
The holiday's modern shape comes from a single decision in 2018, when the Municipality of Naples passed a decree establishing the Giornata del Pizzaiuolo, the Day of the Pizza Maker, on January 17. That decree gave a centuries-old parish ritual a legal calendar slot and made it part of the city's UNESCO file: the Arte del pizzaiuolo napoletano had been recognized as intangible heritage in 2017, the year before. The city was responding to its own moment.
Then, in 2021, Antonio Pace and AVPN, the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, took it global with Vera Pizza Day, a livestreamed masterclass relay from certified Neapolitan pizzerias around the world. Press outside Italy rounded that off to World Pizza Day. No UN body ever ratified the name. It does not matter. The day is real, and it is Neapolitan.
Where to go in Naples on January 17
Most of the city's old pizzerias work as normal on the day. Gino e Toto Sorbillo sits at the center of the Via dei Tribunali pizza line, where Gino Sorbillo has been one of the louder modern voices around the holiday. The shop is busy any normal evening and busier on the feast day.
Gino e Toto Sorbillo
€€€€ · 51,881 reviews
Find Gino e Toto Sorbillo on Via dei Tribunali in Naples. Check listed opening hours, see the address and browse pizza photos before your visit.
Pizzeria Starita a Materdei runs the Materdei oven that connects the city's pre-war pizza generation to the contemporary one. Antonio Starita is the family name, and the pizza fritta side of the menu is part of the same January 17 tradition: fried dough is the saint's food before it is anyone else's.
Pizzeria Starita a Materdei
€€€€ · 24,673 reviews
Pizza Lovers say: "Unbelievably delicious pizza, light and pillowy dough, and the fried dough fritters with pistachio cream are a must-try. The dough is slightly chewier than some prefer."
For the two-pizza purist version of the day, L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele is the pizzeria. Margherita or marinara, soft cornicione, fast bake, no specials for the holiday. The reverence is in the dough.
