[N 1] Commissioned into service in the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) in 1915, she served during World War I, participating in the Adriatic campaign until she was sunk in 1918.

Like her sister ships, Alessandro Poerio and Guglielmo Pepe, she was named after a famous Neapolitan light cavalryman who helped defend Venice from attacks by the Imperial Austrian Army during the revolutions in 1848.

She had Yarrow Type 3 three-drum water-tube boilers with water pipes, two groups of Belluzzo steam turbines rated at 24,000 hp (17,897 kW), and two three-blade propellers.

[2][6] On 30 December 1915 she became part of the 2nd Scouting Group of the 4th Naval Division along with her sister ships Alessandro Poerio and Guglielmo Pepe, based at Venice.

[6] Escorted as far as the Austro-Hungarian defensive barrage by Cesare Rossarol and Guglielmo Pepe and supported by the destroyers Alpino and Fuciliere and the coastal torpedo boats 40 PN and 46 OS, the destroyer Zeffiro, under the command of Capitano di fregata (Frigate Captain) Costanzo Ciano and with Lieutenant Nazario Sauro, an Italian irredentist, aboard as pilot, entered the port of Poreč on the western side of Istria, a peninsula on Austria-Hungary's coast, at dawn on 12 June 1916.

All the Italian ships returned to base, although they suffered damage and a number of casualties, including four men killed in action.

The MAS boats then raided the harbor at Durrës (known to the Italians as Durazzo) on the coast of the Principality of Albania in an attempt to attack steamers there.

[6] On 2 October 1918 Cesare Rossarol, Alessandro Poerio, Gulglielmo Pepe, and Ippolito Nievo were at sea with the battleship Dante Alighieri, the scout cruiser Carlo Alberto Racchia, and the destroyer Simone Schiaffino to provide distant cover for a British and Italian naval bombardment of Durrës.

On 16 November 1918, 12 days after the end of the conflict with Austria-Hungary, Cesare Rossarol left Pola at 11:40 under the command of Capitano di vascello (Ship-of-the-Line Captain) Ludovico de Filippi to transport an officer of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs to Fiume, where he was to try to convince Serbian-Croatian irregular formations not to oppose the Italian occupation of the city.

At 12:45 that day, shortly after rounding Patera Point on Istria, while most of the crew were having lunch, the ship hit a mine on her port side amidships near the local dynamo, aft of the bridge.

Following the Armistice of Villa Giusti, the Austro-Hungarian naval command made no real attempt to communicate the position or extent of the many minefields, as a result of which a number of ships hit mines in the area after the war, including Cesare Rossarol.

[2][14] In September 1919 a monument to the memory of the 100 men lost aboard Cesare Rossarol was erected at Munat Point, not far from the site of the sinking.

[16] The wreck of Cesare Rossarol lies at a depth of 49 metres (161 ft) less than 1 nautical mile (1.9 km; 1.2 mi) off Ližnjan (known to the Italians as Lisignano).