He was a member of the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy.
He wrote a philosophical work in 1864 called Il Verbo Novello.
He was involved in setting up the radical movement "Fascio della democrazia" in 1883.
A plaque on the house on Piazza Giovanni Bovio number 38 recalls his death in that house:[1]In this house died, poor and uncontaminated Giovanni Bovio, who by meditating with free spirit the infinite and consecrating the reasons of the peoples in adamantine pages, revived with great splendor Italian thought and was a prescient seer of the new age.
U Buccini 1905Bovio was a Freemason initiated to the 33rd degree of the Scottish Rite, after having joined the lodge Caprera of Trani in 1863.