Italy’s Secret Pizza Guardians
As pizza’s global fame grows, a group of culinary “agents” are on a mission to define – and defend – what makes a pizza truly authentic.
On a scorching day under the fierce southern Italian sun, a small crowd gathers just steps from Naples’ San Gennaro catacombs. But they aren’t here to honour the city’s patron saint. Instead, these visitors from Belgium, France, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and Brazil have come for something equally sacred to Naples – its pizza.
They are aspiring pizzaioli (traditional Italian pizza makers), preparing for the most important test of their careers. Their destination: the headquarters of the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN), the “True Neapolitan Pizza Association.” Since its founding in 1984, the AVPN has worked to protect and promote an exacting standard for Naples’ most famous dish – and helped secure UNESCO recognition for “the art” of Neapolitan pizza-making as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
From its humble beginnings as a Neapolitan street food in the late 1800s, pizza has become one of the world’s most beloved dishes. While the traditional forms – the Margherita (tomato sauce, mozzarella, basil) and the marinara (tomato sauce, oregano, garlic) – remain timeless, modern variations now feature everything from blue cheese and honey to Franco Pepe’s creamy, lemon peel-topped Crisommola del Vesuvio.
But just as Champagne or Parmigiano-Reggiano have strict rules of authenticity, AVPN’s “pizza guardians” enforce detailed criteria for what can be called a true Neapolitan pizza.
“There is a big connection between this kind of food and the soul of Naples,” says AVPN vice president Massimo Di Porzio, his official portrait dusted with flour.
The AVPN headquarters is both a training ground and a shrine to pizza. A gleaming bronze pizza statue stands outside, while inside, competitions, trade fairs, and classes preserve the culinary tradition. Its certification rules are uncompromising: the pizza must be roundish, with a puffy cornicione (crust) no taller than 1–2cm, free from large bubbles or burnt spots, and soft, elastic, and foldable. Rolling pins and baking trays are banned. Cooking time may never exceed 90 seconds, and the pizza must be eaten within 10 minutes of leaving the oven.
On the final day of AVPN’s monthly nine-day training course, the students face their exam. They’ve mastered dough-leavening, hydration, yeast science, topping selection, and salt-to-water ratios – even the precise art of sliding a pizza into the oven.
“I was quite nervous, especially as people started coming back from their exams,” admits Canadian trainee Gemma Eldridge. “But you’re only in there for three minutes – you don’t really have time to be nervous.”
From 10:00 to 18:00 each day, the class has baked up to 40 practice pizzas, and now they wait for their turn under the watchful eyes of Naples pizza legends Gino Sorbillo and Paolo Surace. The test pizza? The classic Margherita.
Passing this exam is just the beginning. The true challenge lies ahead – keeping these exacting standards alive in their own pizzerias, wherever in the world they return. For these international trainees, the mission to protect Naples’ culinary soul will be a lifelong one.
While anyone can sign up for pizza-chef training, the hurdles are much higher for a restaurant seeking official AVPN accreditation. To qualify, a pizzeria must first employ an AVPN-trained pizzaiolo. Then comes the paperwork – pages of declarations pledging to “accept, respect and promote the tradition of Neapolitan pizza.” Applicants must photograph their kitchen, equipment, and ingredients, and record videos of their head chef preparing, shaping, and baking a pizza. All this is sent to AVPN headquarters in Naples – with no guarantee of approval.
So far, about 1,000 pizzerias – from Japan to Siberia and Ecuador to the UK – have joined this elite club. Once accepted, they receive a certificate emblazoned with a striped figure wielding a baking peel, signalling to travellers that the pizza here is the real deal.
But accreditation is no lifetime free pass. The AVPN sends undercover “pizza agents” on surprise missions to check that standards are still being met. Any slip in quality, and the restaurant risks being struck from the list.
One such agent, who spoke on condition of anonymity, recalls the worst offence he encountered: “The pizza was crispy, with dough that was definitely not approved.” The AVPN investigated and promptly removed the offender from its registry. In Japan, a rogue pizzeria that continued to display its certificate after being expelled learned its lesson the hard way. “We went to Osaka and removed it,” laughs AVPN vice president Massimo Di Porzio, remembering the lawyer who accompanied the enforcement team.
For food historian Karima Mover-Nocchi of the University of Siena, this mission to protect authentic pizza has an unexpected twist. By codifying what “authentic” means, the AVPN is also creating an exclusive inner circle of true-pizza holders. “They’re not just preserving a tradition – they’re producing it,” she says. “They elevate pizza into a transcendental experience. They’re safeguarding the dish, but also creating a mystique – and making you feel like part of something timeless.”
Ironically, these painstaking standards for “traditional” Neapolitan pizza are relatively new – a cloak-and-dagger drama layered over a dish that once had no such rigid rules.
According to AVPN vice president Massimo Di Porzio, Naples’ artisanal pizza-makers once each had their own distinct techniques, usually passed down from father to son. But by the late 20th Century, cheap fast-food imitations were flooding the market, threatening to erase the city’s authentic tradition. In response, AVPN founder Antonio Pace – himself from a long lineage of pizzaioli – brought together 16 other pizza-making families to agree on a single definition of a “true” Neapolitan pizza.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing for this group, now known as the “17 families.” Disagreements flared, particularly over the finer points of dough fermentation. Still, in 1984, they published their first set of official guidelines and formally established the AVPN.
Fourteen years later, in 1998, the organisation partnered with Naples’ Università Parthenope to create the Socio-Economic Observatory of Neapolitan Pizza, researching everything from pizza science and cutting-edge baking technologies to the broader cultural and economic impact of the dish. Each year, top pizza-makers gather at a conference to debate whether new developments – such as advances in flour production – warrant adjusting the official rules.
Despite this meticulous approach to Neapolitan pizza, Antonio Puzzi, editor-in-chief of Pizza e Pasta Italiana, points out that Italy boasts dozens of other distinct pizza styles. There’s pizza fritta, a deep-fried calzone from Naples; the thin, crispy Roman pizza, rolled with a pin rather than stretched by hand; pizza nel ruoto, baked in a small tin; the crunchy, deep-fried pizzonta from Abruzzo; and countless regional focaccias and flatbreads.
“There are many recognised kinds of pizza in different cities and regions,” says Puzzi. “But the only official representation is for Neapolitan pizza.”
Still, purists remain fiercely protective of the name. Abroad, ordering a chicken pizza is enough to spark Italian outrage. The American chain Domino’s learned this the hard way: after struggling to win over local customers – and failing in its attempt to open 880 shops – it declared bankruptcy in Italy in 2022, never daring to open in Naples.
Yet tastes are evolving. While the AVPN once had a reputation for inflexibility, Di Porzio insists they are more open to adaptation than people think. “If we can improve something, we’ll change it,” he says.
In 2024, famed pizzaiolo and AVPN examiner Gino Sorbillo stirred controversy by unveiling a Neapolitan pizza with Hawaiian-style toppings. Critics like Puzzi dismissed it as a “provocation,” and staff at Sorbillo’s Naples restaurant hesitated to serve it. But Sorbillo defends the experiment. “Pizza doesn’t stop at a certain point – it’s always developing, changing. The pizza of today is not the same as 40 years ago.”
The AVPN has also faced backlash for loosening other rules, such as its 2020 decision to allow electric ovens alongside traditional wood-fired ones. The change upset hardcore traditionalists, but Di Porzio says balance is key.
“I always say, pizza napoletana is not necessarily the best – but it’s the one with the deepest cultural roots,” he says. “It’s a skill we need to teach and preserve.”
