Between the 1870s and 1890s, the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) built a series of torpedo cruisers, as part of a program intended to strengthen the fleet during a period of limited naval budgets. A total of six different classes comprising eighteen vessels were constructed. The first vessel, Pietro Micca, was laid down in 1875, and was one of the first torpedo cruisers built by any navy. She proved to be a disappointment in service, being too slow to be an effective warship. Pietro Micca was followed by the more successful design, Tripoli, which provided the basis for the four Goito-class cruisers and the eight-vessel Partenope class. The four Goitos were built on an experimental basis, with Confienza being used as the basis for the Partenopes. While those vessels were being built, a pair of smaller vessels—the Folgore class—were ordered. The final class, which comprised Agordat and Coatit, was built in the late 1890s to be fleet scouts. Like Pietro Micca, the Agordat class was too slow for its intended role.
Most of the Italian torpedo cruisers served during the relatively uneventful 1880s, 1890s, and 1900s, and as a result, saw little activity outside of routine training operations. By the early 1900s, many of the cruisers had been reduced to subsidiary roles or had been discarded outright. A handful of vessels, specifically of the Partenope and Agordat classes, were still in front-line service by the time of the Italo-Turkish War in 1911–1912, and they saw action primarily as coastal bombardment vessels supporting Italian forces operating in North Africa. The surviving vessels still in service during World War I saw no offensive operations, though four—Tripoli, Goito, Partenope, and Minerva—that had been converted into minelayers, were employed to help blockade the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea. Partenope was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat in March 1918, the only Italian torpedo cruiser to be lost to hostile action. Long since obsolete by the early 1920s, the remaining torpedo cruisers were then sold for scrap. Their place in the fleet's reconnaissance force was taken by a group of German and Austro-Hungarian light cruisers that were acquired as war reparations.
| Armament | The number and type of the primary armament |
|---|---|
| Armor | The maximum thickness of the deck armor |
| Displacement | Ship displacement at full combat load |
| Propulsion | Number of shafts, type of propulsion system, and top speed generated |
| Service | The dates work began and finished on the ship and its ultimate fate |
| Laid down | The date the keel assembly commenced |
| Commissioned | The date the ship was commissioned |