Born from an intuition and a necessity to secure food supplies that would last, dry pasta seems to be an offspring of Arabic culture, although legends, interpretations and readings move the origin to Italy and the African coast. Until the seventeenth century famine that struck the kingdom of Naples, pasta was not intended as a broadly consumed food. Pasta became an essential food for its nutritional qualities at the same time as the invention of the mechanical press (in Naples also known as Ngegno), allowing for low cost pasta production by pressing a mixture of water and durum wheat semolina through a drawing tool. Naples, and Gragnano in particular, with their microclimate composed of wind, sun and humidity, provided an ideal location for drying; the most delicate and important phase in pasta making.
Everybody in the Kingdom of Naples, from street kids (also known as “scugnizzi”) to the nobles, ate pasta. However, they seasoned and prepared it in different ways (this is around the time the nickname "Mangiamaccheroni" came about). It is clear from this history that the people of the Kingdom of Naples gave pasta production some of its most meaningful developments. For example, it was an engineer under Ferdinand I that invented the 'Men of Bronze," which replaced people’s feet in amalgamating the dough. This laid the foundation for the first industrial plants dedicated to pasta making. Thus, Gragnano became the epicenter of pasta production.
Gragnano, with its windmills and fresh water springs, has the perfect mineral composition to achieve the ultimate pasta mixture. With its legendary and mystical tradition linked to the production of pasta, with streets filled with long spaghetti left to dry and sunny roofs of dried short pasta cuts, Gragnano became celebrated by writers, poets and historians, as the "home of pasta." Gragnano was rebuilt in the first half of the 19th century facing the direction of the wind; this change turned the city into a “Giant Dryer,” which was ideal for the development of pasta.
Along with the territory, the professions of the men and women who have lived and experienced Gragnano have evolved. Those who once were “impastatore and impastapasta” (the boss and the deputy who followed every stage of production), who took care of “gramula” (Gramulista), those who filled the winepress (Serrapressa), the ones who put pasta on dough tailoring (Spanditore) and the ones who, two at a time, carried 10 rods, 4 per hand and 1 on each shoulder (Aizacanne), today are engineers, skilled workers, and plant managers. But their gestures still mimic the care of the Deputato, who with the “Impastatore” monitored the stages of “pasta drying” and the mastery of the Tiracanna and Sfilatore, who removed dry pasta from the machinery and made bunches of 5 kg each.
The patience, skill and careful monitoring to verify if pasta is still nzellusa (wet) or “bona e man” (ready) have contributed to a pasta product that has the taste and texture of 500 years of experience.