Discovered wall painting in the ruins of Pompeii appears to depict pizza - NPR, June 28, 2023 Now here was a feast—a golden crust of einkorn & emmer pesto—smeared with herbs of antique appeal: almonds, honey, parsley, mint. This is the baker’s long-wrecked house in what was, in pre-volcanic times, the town’s commercial center, where hospitality ran high & xenia called for frescoed walls embellished with Apollonian antics. A silver platter served up adoreum— a flatbread nothing like your favorite but a crisp, wood-fired disk that wore a garnish of pomegranate & a bay laurel leaf heady & mythic. Very slowly then all at once would be no one’s order. Who cares if the wine goblet’s corrosive when the vintage is robust? Days become weeks, earth tremors so common they’re ignored. Prophets & portent might be numerous—but so, too, are mouths to feed. Before the fresco fell into fragments, the baker’s dutiful assistant set out the meal tray with a flourish. Writing in a villa across the bay, an eyewitness watched the smoke plume rise, branch over the sky like an umbrella pine before the horizon vanished in a wake of fleecy clouds.