Legend has it the Great Venetian Explorer, Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy following his exploration of the Far East in the late 13th century. However, pasta is traced back as far as 400 B.C. with evidence in the bas-relief carvings of an Etruscan tomb in a cave about 30 miles north of Rome, depict a group of natives making what appears to be pasta using such instruments a rolling-out table, pastry wheel and flour bin. It is believed that they prepared the first lasagna made of spelt which is a cereal like wheat. Further proof that Marco Polo didnt discover pasta is found in the will of Ponzio Baestone, a Genoan soldier, dated 1279 who requested bariscella peina de macaronea small basket of macaroni, a full 16 years before Marco Polo returned from China.

The Chinese were making a noodle-like food as early as 3000 B.C. In fact, Greek mythology suggests that the Greek God Vulcan invented a device that made strings of dough, the first spaghetti.

In the 11th century, the Arabs brought pasta around the Mediterranean basin, but spread to Italy due to the very agreeable climate. In the 17th century in Naples, pasta with tomato arrived in Europe after America was discovered.

Since its discovery, pasta was eaten using hands. It wasnt until nearly 1700 that one of King Ferdinand IIs chamberlains had the bright idea of using a fork with 4 short prongs to eat pasta! Since then, pasta was also served during the Courts banquets all over Italy, and from here its world tour began.

Pasta made its way to the New World through the English, who discovered it while touring Italy. Colonists brought to America the English practice of cooking noodles at least one half hour, then smothering them with cream sauce and cheese. But it was the U.S. President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) who is credited with bringing the first maccaroni machine to America in 1789. While in Naples serving as the U.S. Ambassador to France, he sampled pasta and fell in love with it. He ordered crates of "maccheroni", along with a pasta-making machine to be sent back to the States.

The first rudimentary machines for the mass-production of pasta started in Naples in the beginning of the last century. The environment in Naples was key to the drying process, a most critical moment in making pasta.

The first industrial pasta factory in America was built in Brooklyn in 1848 by, of all people, a Frenchman, who spread his spaghetti strands on the roof to dry in the sunshine. With the full advent of electricity in the 1900s, the pasta industry was made a lot easier. Machines took over the labor intensive chores like mixing the dough and cutting the shapes.

This overall reproduction makes pasta the most known Italian food all around the world.

"Everything you see I owe to spaghetti."
Sophia Loren