During the war, she participated in operations in Cyrenaica and the eastern Mediterranean Sea, including the seizure of the islands of Rhodes and the Dodecanese.

The Navy specified a vessel that would be more powerful than contemporary armored cruisers and faster than foreign pre-dreadnought battleships on a displacement of no more than 13,000 long tons (13,210 t).

On 30 September, Vittorio Emanuele, her sister Roma, and the armored cruiser Pisa cruised in the Aegean Sea, searching for the Ottoman training squadron that had departed Beirut for Constantinople two days before, and did not know that war had been declared.

[5] On 18 October, Vittorio Emanuele and her three sisters, along with three cruisers and several destroyers and torpedo boats escorted a convoy that carried half of the 2nd Infantry Division to Benghazi.

When the Ottomans refused to surrender the city before the amphibious assault, the Italian fleet opened fire on the Turkish defenders at 08:00, while landing parties from the ships and the Army infantry went ashore.

In early 1912, most of the fleet had withdrawn to Italy for repairs and refit, leaving only a small force of cruisers and light craft to patrol the North African coast.

Over the next two months, the ships cruised in the Aegean to prevent the Turks from attempting to launch their own amphibious operations to retake the islands Italy had seized in May.

The 1st Division left port on 14 October, but was recalled later that day, when the Ottomans had agreed to sign a peace treaty to end the war.

The Italian Naval Chief of Staff, Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, believed that an active fleet policy was prohibited by the serious threat from submarines in the confined waters of the Adriatic Sea.

Instead, Revel decided to implement blockade at the southern end of the Adriatic with the battle fleet, while smaller vessels, such as the MAS boats conducted raids on Austro-Hungarian ships and installations.

Meanwhile, Revel's capital ships would be preserved to confront the Austro-Hungarian battle fleet in the event that it sought a decisive engagement.

[12] On 14–15 May 1917, three light cruisers of the Austro-Hungarian Navy raided the Otranto Barrage; in the ensuring Battle of the Strait of Otranto, Vittorio Emanuele and her sisters raised steam to assist the Allied warships, but the Italian commander refused to permit them to join the battle for fear of risking their loss in the submarine-infested Adriatic.

In the summer of 1922, she was in Constantinople when the American destroyer USS Bulmer accidentally collided with a cutter from Vittorio Emanuele, causing minor damage to the boat.

Then-Lieutenant Joseph J. Clark, Bulmer's executive officer, came aboard Vittorio Emanuele to apologize for the incident.