Our Story
The Origins (Naples, 1923)
Naples, 1923. It all starts here. Ciro Leone was a baker. It was Giorgina, his wife — six years older than him, a woman of character and vision — who convinced him to become a pizza maker. Together they opened the Trianon pizzeria in Via Pietro Colletta in Naples, right in front of the famous Michele pizzeria. Ciro had doubts: opening so close to a monument of Neapolitan pizza seemed like madness. But Giorgina did not hesitate: "Where the sun shines for them, it shines for us too." That phrase became the philosophy of the whole family.
The Leone and Moffa Family
Two families, one story. Carmine Moffa lived opposite the Trianon, on the third floor of Via Cesare Sersale. In the neighborhood he met Immacolata Leone, Ciro's daughter. They got engaged in 1954, married in 1956. As the Leone family tradition dictated, Carmine learned the art of the pizza maker — a trade that was learned by observing, not from books or schools, but by standing next to the most experienced, guarding the secrets as if they were gold. Immacolata and Carmine had five children: Pinuccio, Ciro, Rosaria, Giorgio and Marco. All raised amidst the scent of flour and the heat of the oven.
Giorgio learns the trade
Fourteen years old, an oven, a destiny. Giorgio Moffa learns the trade from his uncle Pasquale Leone when he is only 14. He grows up inside the Trianon, amid his grandfather's scoldings and hand-tossed pizzas. It is the ancient way of passing on an art: without manuals, with eyes and hands. Every movement repeated a thousand times. Every secret guarded and then, when the time comes, passed on.
Trianon Chiaia (1987)
1987: pizza enters chic Naples. Giorgio and his brother Ciro open Trianon Chiaia near Piazza Amedeo. A revolutionary idea for the time: bringing true Neapolitan pizza to the aristocratic district of the city, in a refined venue. Trianon Chiaia immediately becomes a reference point for artists, sportsmen, and personalities of the Neapolitan nightlife. Maradona was at home here.
Arrival in Gaeta (2005)
2005: the sea of Ulysses, Ciro's pizza. In 2009, the Trianon Chiaia pizzeria was sold. But Giorgio had already chosen his new home: the Gaeta seafront, the Riviera of Ulysses. In 2005 he opens Antica Pizzeria Ciro 1923, in Via Lungomare Giovanni Caboto. The exact same pizza. Perfectly round, just as his grandfather wanted. A circle that closes — and continues.
Today Giorgio Moffa is patron and master pizza maker of Antica Pizzeria Ciro 1923. His is a story rooted in a Naples still rich in values, looking to the future with the same tenacity with which Giorgina De Somma looked at the sun.
From father to son. From grandfather to grandson. From generation to generation.
