Lake Como in a can: Italian company sells canned air as unique souvenir for tourists

For tourists returning from vacation, a camera roll full of photos and a suitcase bursting with souvenirs are usually the closest they can come to bringing a piece of their holiday destination home with them.

But now, communications company ItalyComunica says it has bottled the very air of Italy’s picturesque Lake Como and is selling these cans for €9.90 ($A16) apiece.

Each can is said to contain 400ml of “100 per cent authentic air” collected from Lake Como, a destination that has become increasingly popular with tourists in recent years thanks to its beauty and its celebrity associations — George and Amal Clooney own a house nearby, while movies including Casino Royale and House of Gucci were filmed there.

More than 5.6 million people visited Lake Como in 2023, and the numbers are consistently growing, according to the Lombardy tourism bureau.

In an attempt to capitalise on the visitor numbers, marketing specialist Davide Abagnale originally created an e-commerce site selling Lake Como posters, after seeing so many posters of San Francisco and Los Angeles on his honeymoon in 2022.

His latest initiative, selling canned air, aims to “create a souvenir that could be easily transported in a suitcase for tourists” and “something original, fun and even provocative,” a spokesperson for ItalyComunica told CNN on Monday.

“It’s not a product, it’s a tangible memory that you carry in your heart,” Abagnale told CNN, adding that once tourists are home and have opened the can, they can repurpose it as a souvenir pen holder.

Not everyone is on board with this. Como mayor Alessandro Rapinese said it wouldn’t be his first idea for tourists, and would prefer they take home other souvenirs, like the silk scarves the area is known for.

“It’s a novel idea, but not for everyone,” he told CNN. “But as mayor of one of Italy’s most beautiful cities, if someone wants to take some of their air home, that’s fine as long as they also take beautiful memories of this area.”

When reached by phone, Chiara Piscitelli, who sells the canned air in her bookstore in Como said it was a real “gadget”.

Despite the apparent novelty, Como isn’t the first Italian tourist spot to offer a can of its finest air. Abagnale says the idea actually came from other locations, like Naples, where the local air has been sold for years.

And in 2020, one company began selling bottles of “authentic” air from England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to provide UK residents overseas with the scent of home.

Tourists can also buy cans of air in Iceland, while a Canadian company saw its sales boom in 2015 when hundreds of Chinese customers began buying its canned air.