

Italy’s tourism ministry is facing ridicule after an official video to attract tourists to Italy used footage of people in Slovenia drinking Slovenian wine.
The video, part of a 9-million euro ($9.91 million) campaign produced by the Armando Testa communications group, was widely mocked by critics and on social media even before it emerged that part of it had been shot abroad.
Titled “Open to Meraviglia” (Open to Wonder), it uses a computerized “influencer” version of Venus, a symbol of Italian art, as depicted by Sandro Botticelli in his Renaissance masterpiece “The Birth of Venus.”
The very modern “Venus” dons a miniskirt and is shown eating pizza and presenting some of Italy’s main tourist attractions.
Art historian Tomaso Montanari called the advertising campaign “grotesque” and an “obscene” waste of money, while the video was lampooned by users of Italian social media platfo