The history of pasta: a symbolic Italian specialty

Origins and development of pasta production

Pasta is unarguably the most famous specialty exported from Italy. But have you ever asked yourself what its origins are? When did it become a part of Italian cooking?

The place and time of its actual birth are controversial; scholars have formed many different hypotheses and various legends have developed about its origins. Some archaeologists have discovered images among Etruscan cave paintings which resemble tools for the preparation of fresh pasta like lasagna. Also from ancient times come stories of fresh pasta similar to tagliatelle in China. However it’s more likely that Marco Polo’s importation of the tradition of pasta from China is a complete legend, because upon his return to Italy in 1295, pasta had already been cited in a document from around 1250.

One of the more supported theories is that dry pasta was created in the Middle East and was introduced in Sicily and the rest of Italy with the Arab invasions. In fact, dry pasta is documented for the first time in Muslim texts around the year 1000 with the name ittrija. The custom of preparing fresh pasta has instead been linked to Greece, where it was called laganon.

The point is that a few centuries after the Arab invasions of Sicily, pasta producers were already present in various areas of Italy: above all around Naples, but also in Apulia, Genoa, and Florence. Gragnano was already known in 1500 as the home of durum wheat pasta and around 1750 the city’s administration rearranged the urban layout of the city in order to favor the drying of “maccheroni”: an action that testifies to the importance of pasta production in this area already at that time.

In any case, the origins of pasta as an Italian specialty for excellence are surely linked to the tradition of wheat cultivation in the Roman world, in the south of the peninsula and in its colonies. Its origins are also linked to the custom of mixing cereals and water, which has been at the foundation of Mediterranean gastronomy for thousands of years.