Roman-Style vs. Neapolitan Pizza: What’s the Difference?

Ask ten people in Berlin what makes a pizza “authentic” and most will describe a Neapolitan pie: a thick, puffy, charred-edge crust from a wood-fired oven. That’s a fair answer, it’s just not the only one. Roman-style pizza is just as traditional, just as Italian, and built around an entirely different idea of what a good crust should do.

It starts with the dough

Neapolitan dough is made quickly, often same-day, and baked at extremely high heat for under two minutes. The result is a soft, chewy, slightly wet centre with a puffy, blistered edge. Roman-style dough, the kind we use at Zia Maria, rests slowly over several days. That long, cold rest breaks down the gluten and sugars far more thoroughly, which is what gives Roman pizza its signature texture: thin, light, and properly crisp all the way through, not just around the rim.

It’s a different goal entirely. Neapolitan pizza is built to be pillowy. Roman pizza is built to shatter slightly when you bite it, then stay light in your stomach afterward, no dense, doughy center weighing you down.

The shape and the serve

Neapolitan pizza is almost always a single, round pie, eaten with a knife and fork or folded in quarters. Roman pizza has two common forms: pizza tonda (a thin, crisp round pie, closer to what you’ll find on our menu) and pizza al taglio (“by the cut”), baked in large rectangular trays and sold by weight or by the slice, popular for a fast, casual lunch.

That difference in format is part of why Roman-style pizza works so well for groups, business lunches, and catering. A Neapolitan pie is built for one or two people sharing a single pizza. A Roman tray is built to be cut, spread across a table, and shared properly, which is exactly the kind of eating we like to do here.

Why we bake Roman

Neither style is “better”, they’re just doing different jobs. We chose Roman-style because it fits how we actually want people to eat with us: unhurried, shared, and light enough that a proper lunch doesn’t turn into an afternoon nap. If you’ve only ever had Neapolitan, it’s worth trying the difference for yourself, our full menu is fresh daily in Friedrichshain.