A bold statement I know, but I love pizza. That means I’ve eaten a lot of pizza. I took up running and yoga so I didn’t have to restrict my consumption of it. Before we arrived in Naples we’d heard that the Italians make the best pizza in the world and we thought, “yeah, OK, it’s going to be good, but we enjoy the pizza back home so how good can it be?” Then when we got to Sicily we thought the pizza there was the best we’d ever had, only to find out that Italians consider the best pizza to be in Naples, and we thought “what, better than this? that’s gotta be some amazing pizza!”

Our first taste of the real thing, courtesy of Di Matteo’s on Via de Tribunali (i.e. ‘Pizza Street’) in Naples. Former USA President Bill Clinton ate here when he visited Italy in 1994

Well, we’ve been here just over a week and after 5 pizzas and a calzone, they were absolutely right. Naples is the home of pizza, and there’s no better pizza than the Neapolitan hand-made pizza.

Mouth-watering close up of Julie’s Margheria con Melanzane (tomato, cheese, basil leaf and aubergine) pizza at Di Matteo’s restaurant. The dough is proved for about 24 hours and is so thin that we easily put away these dustbin-lid sized beauties and seriously considered seconds.

Pizza Margherita piping hot from a typical wood-fired oven. The thin base, simple, succulent and rich tomato sauce and a sprinkling of toppings mean the pizza cooks very quickly and has a charred, black-spotted underside. This is L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele, the pizzeria that “Eat, Pray, Love” author Elizabeth Gilbert visited

Legend has it that Pizza Margherita was invented in 1889, named after Queen Margherita of Italy, and consists of a tomato base, white mozzarella cheese and topped with a basil leaf. Green, white and red – the colours of the Italian flag!

My Ham and Ricotta Calzone at our local Pizzeria Starita. Fantastic..

Julie’s Pizza Romana at Pizzeria Starita. We agreed that while the bar had been set high by Di Matteo, Starita excelled at the art of the pizza. Obviously we need to apply the scientific method and repeat our tests before deliberating, cogitating and coming to our conclusions

I think I may truly be spoiled once we leave Naples. *sniff*