The paper deals with Francesco Valentini (1789-1862), a linguistic and cultural mediator originally from Rome and active in early 19th century’s Berlin. After retracing his biography, it presents his activities as a language teacher, from which several didactic publications emerged, his contribution to the Italian Questione della Lingua as an external observer and his reflections on the emerging history of the Italian and German language. The most important part of his oeuvre lies in the field of lexicography: the Gran Dizionario grammatico-pratico italiano-tedesco, tedesco-italiano (1831-1836, 4 vols.) can be considered a precursor of modern German-Italian dictionaries.
