Despite the abundance of periodicals in Italian language in Rijeka in the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century, their comprehensive and systematic research together with their modern and objective evaluation is still insufficient. With the aim of contributing to the elucidation and analysis of under-studied Italian publications in Rijeka, we have tried to consider from the contemporary point of view the context in which the subject of our interest appears, to study the available written documents, and to evaluate the facts of literary phenomena within a given corpus. We have tried to substantiate by examples the thesis that literary themes in our local newspapers and magazines of Italian language expression, besides further exploring the Italian literary heritage, have contributed to our overall cultural events through the opening of aesthetic horizons of readers and a number of authors, and have largely contributed to the intertwining of the two cultures. Through testing, systematization and classification of literary topics, we concluded that newspapers and magazines in Rijeka, as the most important medium of the historical period that we examined, have had a significant and dynamic part in the process that led to the gradual change of mindset, views on society and art, and an overall way of thinking and action. In our opinion, through our contribution we have tried to reconstruct from oblivion a valuable segment of Rijeka's cultural heritage.