List of protected cruisers of Italy

From the 1880s to 1910s, the Italian (Royal Navy) built or purchased twenty protected cruisers; the earliest vessels were either built or designed in Britain, though later vessels were constructed in Italy, to Italian designs. Several of these cruisers were ground-breaking warships: was the first major warship equipped with triple-expansion engines and was the first warship armed entirely with quick-firing guns. The first two designs, and the , were armed with large-caliber guns and marked a brief experimentation with the in the 1880s, which represented a shift away from expensive battleships in favor of cheaper vessels that could theoretically destroy battleships easily. Italian naval strategists quickly discarded the concept and returned to more traditional strategies centered on a fleet of battleships. As a result, later cruisers returned to medium-caliber batteries.

The first several designs were intended to fill a variety of roles, including fleet scouts and colonial cruisers, but beginning with , which was solely intended for colonial duties, the began to build more specialized vessels. , , and were designed as fast scouts for the main fleet, and the last design, the , were slower vessels for use in the colonies. One vessel, , was an exception to Italian design preferences. The ship had been ordered by the Ottoman Navy, but the Ottomans failed to pay for the ship, so she remained incomplete until the Italo-Turkish War in 1911, when she was seized by Italy and completed for the .

Italian protected cruisers served in many roles across the globe. Many were deployed to Italy's colonies in Africa, or to foreign stations in the Americas and Asia to show the flag