The grand opening of the National VisitRussia tourist office in Rome will take place on Saturday, November 21. The Moscow-Rome teleconference for journalists will be held at the same time in the TASS press centre.

The opening ceremony in Rome was attended by Vladimir Medinsky, Minister of Culture, Sergey Razov, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Russian Federation to the Italian Republic and the Republic of San Marino, Francesco Palumbo, director of the Italian National Agency for Tourism (ENIT), Pavel Dorokhin, deputy chairman of the Russian Federation State Duma expert committee on innovations and modernization and committee chairman of the Chamber of commerce and industry of the Russian Federation and Ekaterina Sankina, the VisitRussia office director in Italy.

This is the fifth VisitRussia office to be opened abroad under the marketing scheme "Time to relax in Russia". The project aims to help support the tourist industry of the Russian Federation, to build trust in tourist services and also to create a positive image of the country abroad.

VisitRussia currently has offices in Germany, China, the UAE and Finland.