Pizza Museum Serves Up A Slice Of History

A pizza museum in Philadelphia is giving visitor a chance to learn about the history of the famous pie and check out pizza-related artwork while they grab a slice.

The pizza museum is a project of Brian Dwyer, a self-professed pizza lover who holds the Guinness World Record for largest pizza collection and has a tattoo of himself eating a pizza on his back with the phrase “Totally saucesome!”

Dwyer came up with Pizza Brain, what he sees as the world’s first pizza museum, The Associated Press reported. He opened up the Philadelphia establishment with two partners.

“We thought it was a funny idea, and we started doing some research,” Dwyer said. “And when we discovered that nowhere on earth was there a physical place, a monument built to pizza, we said, ‘This is going to be huge.'”

The September 7 opening of Pizza Brain was a huge event in Philadelphia and since then has drawn crowds to the city’s Fishtown neighborhood.

The pizza museum has everything from pizza-related photos and magazine covers to related albums, like the soundtrack of Mystic Pizza and even, yes, a holiday album put out by Domino’s.

The 28-year-old Dwyer had only a small pizza collection a few years ago when he and his friends decided to make their own art exhibit called, “Give Pizza Chance.” Within a few months, he quit his job to work on Pizza Brain full time, The Associated Press noted.

Though the pizza museum itself has gotten a lot of attention, Dwyer wants people to know that the team put a lot of thought into the actual food, too.

“The concept has been so hyped and there has been so much attention that I think people just assume we haven’t put any thought into the food,” Dwyer, who’s been profiled by Time, NPR, The Hufington Post, told the Philadelphia Daily News. “But that’s all Joe has been doing. We want the food to outshine the reputation of the museum.”

What do you think — would you visit a pizza museum?