Italy’s tourism ministry has faced ridicule after releasing an official promotional video to attract tourists to Italy which featured footage of people… in Slovenia drinking Slovenian wine.

The video, part of a €9 million campaign produced by telecoms group Armando Testa, was mocked on social media even before it was revealed that footage of the video had been filmed outside Italy.

Entitled ‘Open to Meraviglia’, the video features a digitized ‘influencer’ figure of Aphrodite, a symbol of Italian art, as depicted in Sandro Botticelli’s painting ‘The Birth of Venus’.

The “modern Venus” wears a miniskirt and is seen eating pizza and showcasing some of Italy’s main tourist attractions, such as the Colosseum in Rome or the cathedral in Florence.

Art historian Tommaso Montanari called the ad campaign a “disgusting” and “vulgar” waste of money, while the video was mocked by users of Italian social media platforms.

Some footage shows a group of young people smiling on a sunny patio and drinking wine in what is presented as a typical Italian setting.

However, some have noticed that the patio in question is actually in the Čotar region of Slovenia, near the Italian border, and the bottle on the table is labeled Čotar wine.

Armando Testa was not immediately available for comment.

Italian Tourism Minister Daniela Sandance, a member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Italian Adelphi party, called critics of the video “snobbish” and said the depiction of Venus as an influencer was aimed at attracting young people.