Where did Bill Clinton eat pizza in Naples?
Bill Clinton ate a pizza a portafoglio at Antica Pizzeria Di Matteo on Via dei Tribunali during the 1994 G7 summit. Here is what that stop looks like now.
Naples spent the second week of July 1994 under helicopter noise and closed roads. The 20th G7 summit had taken the city over, and in the middle of it a US president ended up at a counter on Via dei Tribunali with lunch in one hand and no table involved. The thing he ordered is still sold at the same window, at roughly the same price, to anyone who walks past.
Which pizzeria did Bill Clinton eat at in Naples?
Bill Clinton ate at Antica Pizzeria Di Matteo on Via dei Tribunali, in the heart of the historic centre, during the G7 summit held from 8 to 10 July 1994. The stop was not on the official schedule. Accounts from the time describe him walking the area with security and following the smell of the oven through the door.
Via dei Tribunali is one of the old Greek decumani, a straight and narrow line of stone that cuts through the centro storico and carries more pizzerias per hundred metres than almost anywhere else in Italy. Di Matteo sits on that run at number 94. Like most of its neighbours it works two ways at once: a sit-down room for people with an hour to spare, and a street window at the front selling fried snacks and folded pizza to everyone else.
The window is the reason the visit happened at all. A president on a walkabout did not need a reservation, a menu or twenty minutes.
| The 1994 stop | On the record |
|---|---|
| When | 8 to 10 July 1994, during the 20th G7 summit in Naples |
| Where | Antica Pizzeria Di Matteo, Via dei Tribunali 94 |
| What he ate | Pizza a portafoglio, folded and eaten by hand |
| What he drank | Coca-Cola |
| Who made it | Ernesto Cacialli, the pizzaiolo on the oven that day |
| Why it stuck | Unplanned, filmed, and replayed worldwide as an image of Neapolitan pizza |
What is a pizza a portafoglio, and why did he order one?
A pizza a portafoglio is a full Neapolitan pizza folded twice into a wallet shape, wrapped in paper, and eaten standing up. It is the cheapest hot food in the centre, about 2 euros at the Di Matteo window today, and it exists because Naples has fed itself on the move for two centuries.
The dough is the same dough that goes into the dining room. Bakers pull it a touch thinner and lighter so the fold holds without tearing, then it goes into a wood oven at 430 to 480 degrees for barely more than a minute. That short violent bake is what makes the base pliable rather than crisp, and it is one reason UNESCO inscribed the craft of the Neapolitan pizzaiuolo on its intangible heritage list in 2017.
Prices on that stretch of street have stayed remarkably low. A sit-down margherita at the famous rooms runs about 6.50 to 7 euros, while the window versions sit far under that.
| Street snack | What it is | Typical price |
|---|---|---|
| Pizza a portafoglio | Full pizza folded twice, eaten by hand | about €2 |
| Pizza fritta | Dough fried rather than baked, filled | €2.50 to €4 |
| Cuoppo | Paper cone of fried fish or vegetables | €3 to €6 |
| Frittatina | Fried pasta cake, béchamel inside | €2 to €3 |
| Sfogliatella riccia | Crisp layered shell, ricotta filling | about €2 to €2.50 |
| Babà | Rum-soaked sponge | €2 to €3 |
Six stops at those prices come to roughly 12 to 15 euros, which is the honest budget behind the Clinton photo. Our breakdown of what Neapolitan street food actually costs goes item by item, and if pizza is the whole point, current pizza prices around the city covers the sit-down side.
Who was the pizzaiolo who served the president?
Ernesto Cacialli made the pizza. He was working Di Matteo's oven during the summit week, and the nickname that came out of it, the president's pizza-maker, followed him for the rest of his career. He later opened a place of his own built on that story.
Naples treats its pizzaioli as public figures, so a nickname like that has real commercial weight. The pizzeria Cacialli opened carried the presidential association into its own name and its own reputation, and it was still generating headlines decades later: the Guardian reported on the pizzeria named for the nickname in May 2024.
Can you still order the president's pizza at Di Matteo?
Yes, and it is one of the easiest famous meals in Italy to repeat. The street window at Via dei Tribunali 94 sells pizza a portafoglio for about 2 euros and works roughly 9am to midnight. No booking, no ticket, no minimum spend. The upstairs room costs more and takes longer.
The catch is the hour. Between about 1pm and 3pm, and again from 7pm, the pavement outside compresses into a slow-moving crowd of people ordering, eating and photographing at the same time. Come at 10am or 4pm and the same order takes ninety seconds. Evening walks solve the problem differently by moving you between windows before each one fills up, so it is worth a look at what your date still has open if you are only in town two nights.
How do you build the stop into a morning in the centro storico?
Start on Via dei Tribunali before 11am, take the portafoglio at the window while the queue is three people deep, then walk west along the decumano toward Port'Alba and Piazza Bellini. That single line of street covers the folded pizza, the fried snacks and the oldest pizzeria addresses inside about ninety minutes.
The order matters more than the distance. Fried food first while it is hot, pastry later, coffee whenever the counter is free. Naples recorded around 15 million tourist stays in 2025, about 4 percent up on the previous year, and the crowd now arrives earlier in the day than it used to, which has pushed the quiet window back toward opening time.
If you want the route written out with addresses and timings, a self-guided walking route does exactly that. If you would rather not think about it, check the market walk's next departures for the cheap market version, or compare the guided street food walks we track across the centre, which run from about $33 to $105 and all cancel free up to 24 hours out.
Which other famous visitors have a Naples pizza address?
Three names come with a verifiable address. Julia Roberts filmed at L'Antica Pizzeria da Michele for Eat Pray Love in 2010, Stanley Tucci filmed at three separate pizzerias for a 2021 television episode, and Anthony Bourdain ate a margherita at Pizzeria Pellone. Most other celebrity pizza stories in Naples circulate without a source.
That gap is worth naming plainly. Guy Fieri and Gordon Ramsay both get asked about constantly in relation to Naples, and neither has a documented, dated visit to a named Neapolitan pizzeria that we could stand behind, so we do not print one. Diego Maradona is a different case again: the murals across the Quartieri Spagnoli are real and easy to find, but the food stories attached to him are tributes and anecdotes rather than records.
The three that do check out are worth reading in order, because they picked completely different Naples. There is the film scene that created a permanent queue at da Michele, Stanley Tucci's three Naples pizza stops spread across the city, and the margherita that Anthony Bourdain picked out of a working neighbourhood. Clinton's is still the most repeatable of the four, because it costs two euros and takes ninety seconds.
