The unbuilt Francesco Caracciolo fast battleships

The design represented a substantial step beyond Italy's early dreadnoughts, with eight 15-inch guns, a heavy secondary battery, and multiple torpedo tubes on a roughly 34,000-ton hull. One namesake hull progressed far enough to be launched in 1920. Its scale and attractive lines promised to move Italy into the fast-battleship era. Cancellation followed before the class entered service. Wartime disruption and the emerging treaty environment ended the program after its ambitions had already taken physical form.