Inside Pasta Factories: Amazing Photographs Show How Pasta Production Really Looked Like From the Early 20th Century

Pasta is perhaps the most popular Italian dish originated in Sicily in the 12th century. For a long time it remained a food for the rich and privileged, and only in the 18th century, industrial production has turned the paste into the main cheap product for most Italians.

Mass immigration of Italians to America in the early 20th century helped pasta to gain huge popularity outside of Italy and become a national Italian dish.

However, until the late 1950s, many had no clue about how it is done, and even believed that pasta grows on trees.

These photos from 20th century pasta factories show the actual process by which the dough is squeezed, shaped, cut and dried on its way to the dinner table.

Pasta is hung out to dry in a market.

Young boys carry strands of pasta to a factory yard for drying, 1900.

Pasta strands hung out to dry at a factory in Naples, Italy, circa 1925.

circa 1925

Drying the Macaroni in the courtyard, 1928.

A young boy carrying strings of pasta in a macaroni factory in Naples, Italy, 1929.

Spaghetti hangs in a drain chamber in an Italian pasta factory.

A worker hangs pasta to dry in a factory in Italy, 1932.

1932

An Italian factory worker bends dried spaghetti with a stick, 1932.

A worker making macaroni in Russia, 1932.

Spaghetti production workers hanging spaghetti over bamboo sticks to dry them in Campania, Italy, 1932.

Three Neapolitan boys carrying a bundle of spaghetti, 1932.

Men drying macaroni in Naples, 1934.

A chef makes tagliatelle at King Bomba’s, one of the largest Italian shops in Soho, London, 1939.

Men at work in a pasta factory, circa 1940.

A worker for Atlantic Macaroni Company hangs spaghetti to dry at a factory in Long Island City, New York, 1943.

Strands of spaghetti dry on racks near the beach in Amalfi, Italy, 1949.

Zelda Albano cuts spaghetti into lengths as it emerges from a machine at a pasta factory in Holloway, London, 1955.

A worker placing spaghetti on a drying rack before it is transferred to a dryer, Italy, circa 1955.

(Photos: Getty Images)