It seems that Italy is contemplating petitioning Unesco to add Neapolitan pizza to Unesco’s cultural heritage list. I find this somewhat intriguing so I went out to the Unesco website and found a list of World Heritage Sites from around the world including a long list of sites in Italy. But these are all tangible sites – parks, historic buildings, etc. There is also an “intangible” cultural heritage list which generally includes things like traditional dance, music, arts and crafts and indeed Mexican Cuisine is on the list so food can be included.

Italy recently received Unesco status for the Mediterranean diet which has apparently prompted the country to consider petitioning the organization to place the Neapolitan pizza in the list of cultural icons from the United Nations.

In addition to Neapolitan Pizza Italy is also considering petitions for Sienna’s Palio horse race, violin-making in Cremona, Viareggio’s carnival procession and ancient festivals in towns such as Nola and Viterbo, where locals carry huge statues on their shoulders and walk around narrow streets. Also being considered are the small grapevines planted in depressions in the volcanic soil on the island of Pantelleria, where they are sheltered from the fierce sea wind and produce the nectar-like Passito dessert wine.

Only two candidates will make the final list that Italy will send to Unesco for consideration. The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera thinks Pizza and Cremona’s violin makers will end up being suggested. Cremona is where Stradivari had his workshop.

But the headlines in Italy have focused on pizza after it was this year voted by Italians as one of the dishes which best sums up their nation. It was narrowly outvoted by pasta with tomato sauce, but beat bruschetta with olive oil into a distant third.

The Unesco shortlist specifies pizza from Naples, where the dish was born in the 1700s, and where a pie topped with mozzarella, tomato and basil leaves – recreating the red, white and green of the Italian flag – was presented to Queen Margherita of Savoy in 1889 and named after her.

Naples’ pizzaioli, the skilled spinners of pizza dough, still insist those three ingredients are all that is required for a perfect pizza and opt for a softer, deeper crust than the thinner, crispier version favoured by Romans.

“A good pizzaiolo leaves the dough to rise for up to 24 hours before baking it in a wood-fired oven to ensure a light, digestible pizza,” the food writer Davide Paolini said.

The Italian farmers’ lobby group Coldiretti warned the UN that protection was urgently required. “Consumers don’t know this, but at least half of all pizzas contain imported ingredients,” it said in a statement, adding that Italians were unwittingly tucking in to Margheritas made with Chinese tomatoes, Tunisian and Spanish olive oil “and even seed oil instead of Italian extra virgin”.

Some of the above content came from an article in the Guardian written by Tom Kington.