Italia was an Italian ironclad battleship build for the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy), the lead ship of the Italia class. She and her single sister ship, Lepanto, had lengthy construction times. Italia was laid down in January 1876, launched in September 1880, and completed in October 1885. She was armed with a main battery of four 17 in (432 mm) guns mounted in a central barbette and was capable of a top speed of 17.8 knots (33.0 km/h; 20.5 mph). Unusually, for ships of that era, Italia had an armored deck rather than the typical belt armor.
