List of battleships of Italy

Starting in the 1890s, the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) began building a series of modern battleships. Early designs were marked by their small size, light armor, and high speed compared to contemporary foreign counterparts. The first pre-dreadnought battleship design, the Ammiraglio di Saint Bon class, was constrained by budgetary limits imposed by the legislature. Two ships were ordered by the class's namesake, Admiral Simone de Pacoret Saint Bon, though the design was also influenced by Benedetto Brin, who replaced di Saint Bon as naval minister after his death. Brin designed the next pair of battleships, the Regina Margherita class. These ships were larger than the preceding class, and were intended to challenge the Austro-Hungarian Habsburg-class battleships then under construction. Brin himself died during the construction process. Vittorio Cuniberti designed the next class of small pre-dreadnoughts, the Regina Elena class, which were the fastest battleships in the world at the time of their completion. These ships all served in the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912, where they were primarily used to provide naval gunfire support for the Italian ground troops, as the Ottoman Navy largely confined itself to port.

By the time that the Regina Elenas had been built in the early 1900s, the British battleship HMS Dreadnought had been completed, a revolutionary design that rendered all previous battleships obsolete.