Calabria was a small protected cruiser built for the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) in the 1890s, intended for service in Italy's overseas empire. She was laid down in 1892, launched in 1894, and completed in 1897, and was armed with a main battery of four 15-centimeter (5.9 in) and four 12 cm (4.7 in) guns. Calabria spent significant periods abroad, ranging from deployments to Chinese, North American, and Australian waters, in addition to periods in Italy's East African empire. She saw action during the Italo-Turkish War in 1912 in the Red Sea, primarily bombarding Turkish ports in the area. Calabria was reclassified as a gunboat in 1921, reduced to a training ship in 1924, and sold for scrap at the end of the year.

Calabria was designed by the Chief Engineer, Edoardo Masdea, and was intended for overseas service in the Italian colonial empire. She had a steel hull sheathed with wood and zinc to protect it from fouling during lengthy deployments abroad, where shipyard facilities would not be readily available. The hull was 76 meters (249 ft 4 in) long between perpendiculars and 81 m (265 ft 9 in) long overall. She had a beam of 12.71 m (41 ft 8 in) and a draft of 5.05 m (16 ft 7 in). Her normal displacement was 2,453 long tons (2,492 t) but increased to 2,660 long tons (2,700 t) at full load. She had a flush deck and a ram bow; her superstructure was fairly minimal, consisting primarily of a small conning tower forward. She was fitted with three pole masts for signaling and spotting purposes. Calabria had a crew of between 214 and 254 officers and enlisted crew.

The cruiser was powered by two vertical triple-expansion steam engines that each drove a screw propeller. Steam was supplied by four coal-fired, cylindrical fire-tube boilers that were vented into a single funnel placed amidships, directly astern of the conning tower. The engines had an output of 4,260 indicated horsepower (3,180 kW) and produced a top speed of 16.4 knots (30.4 km/h; 18.9 mph). Calabria had a cruising radius of about 2,500 nautical miles (4,600 km; 2,900 mi) at a more economical speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).

Calabria was armed with a main battery of four 15 cm (5.9 in) L/40 guns, supported by a secondary battery of four 12 cm (4.7 in) L/40 guns, all mounted individually. Light armament for close-range defense against torpedo boats included eight 5.7 cm (2.24 in) L/40 guns, eight 3.7 cm (1.5 in) L/20 guns, and a pair of machine guns. She was also equipped with a pair of 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes. Armor protection consisted of a curved 50 mm (2 in) thick deck that sloped downward at the sides of the hull to provide a measure of vertical protection against incoming fire. Her conning tower also received 50 mm of steel plating on the sides.

Calabria was built at the La Spezia dockyard, with her keel being laid down in February 1892. She was launched on 20 September 1894, and fitting-out work was completed by mid-1897; the new cruiser was commissioned into the Regia Marina (Royal Navy) on 12 July. Upon entering service, Calabria was assigned to the Reserve Division of the Italian fleet, along with the ironclad warships Lepanto, Italia, Duilio, Francesco Morosini, and Ruggiero di Lauria, the protected cruiser Lombardia, the torpedo cruiser Calatafimi, and a pair of torpedo boats.

Calabria spent long periods abroad in her first decade of service. She was operating in Chinese waters in 1899 when the Boxer Uprising broke out. She joined an international fleet that included representatives from the fleets of the Eight Nation Alliance in the mouth of the Hai River while a contingent of 475 soldiers traveled to Beijing to reinforce the Legation Quarter.

The ship was present on 20 May 1902 when the United States formally granted independence to the Republic of Cuba, following the Spanish–American War three years earlier. Calabria and the British protected cruiser HMS Psyche fired salutes to the United States armored cruiser USS Brooklyn. In April 1903, Calabria joined a naval review held for the Japanese Emperor Meiji in Kobe, Japan. The foreign naval contingent included the British pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Glory and protected cruiser Blenheim, the German protected cruiser SMS Hansa, the French protected cruiser Pascal, and the Russian protected cruiser Askold.

Calabria embarked on another major overseas cruise in early 1905 with the then-midshipman Prince Ferdinando aboard, departing Venice on 4 February. By this time, the ship had been fitted with wireless telegraphy equipment. She made a call in Gibraltar before sailing to the West Indies, where she stopped in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. The visit represented an attempt at gunboat diplomacy, aimed at securing payments for debts to Italian nationals. From there, she continued on south to South America, stopping in many ports as she made her way around the continent, including Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Montevideo, Uruguay; Callao and Lima, Peru; Valparaíso, Chile; and Acapulco, Mexico. By 11 September, she had reached San Francisco in the United States. Later in the year, as she continued her circumnavigation of the globe, Calabria visited Australia on a trip to show the flag. By May 1906, Calabria was in Chinese waters, and on the 18th, she was present in Nanking in company with the French cruiser Descartes and the German gunboat SMS Vorwärts. In October 1909, Calabria took part in the Portola Festival in San Francisco, marking the 140th anniversary of the Portolà expedition, the first recorded European exploration of what became California.