The “Rivista di Giornali” (1859-1879) within the Italian and European Mathematical culture of the 19th century

The first issue of the “Rivista di Giornali”, conceived by Giusto Bellavitis (1803-1880), was published in 1859 as a part of the Atti dell’Imperial Regio Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti. At that time Bellavitis, as a full professor of “Geometria descrittiva con disegni” at the University of Padova (in the Regno Lombardo Veneto, part of the Austrian Empire), was in touch with some of the most outstanding mathematical personalities both Italian and European, as testified by his copious correspondence. He showed a true interest in the contemporaneous events of the Italian Risorgimento. By publishing the “Rivista di Giornali” his aim was to develop a tool for the Italian research community, not organized yet within a unified Italian State, apt to synthesize the most relevant new ideas and cultural stimuli in the field of pure and applied mathematics by means of the reviews from national and international scientific literature. Our work is an attempt to present the structure and the characteristic features of the “Rivista di Giornali”, the topics it deals with, the way of working of Bellavitis to provide some elements to observe the situation of the Italian mathematical studies and their relation with European research in the second half of the nineteenth century.