She was equipped with a main battery of six 120-millimeter (4.7 in) guns and had a top speed in excess of 26 knots (48 km/h; 30 mph), but her engines proved to be troublesome in service.

Marsala spent World War I based at Brindisi; she was involved in the Battle of the Otranto Straits in May 1917, where she briefly engaged Austro-Hungarian cruisers.

Steam was provided by fourteen mixed coal and oil firing Blechynden boilers, which were vented into four widely spaced funnels.

Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, the Italian naval chief of staff, believed that Austro-Hungarian submarines could operate too effectively in the narrow waters of the Adriatic, which could also be easily seeded with minefields.

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

After returning to service in February 1916, she was based at Brindisi in southern Italy to support the Otranto Barrage, along with the protected cruisers Puglia, Libia, Quarto, and Nino Bixio, and several destroyers and submarines.

Having united his forces by around 11:30, Acton turned north once again to try to catch the damaged Novara, but half an hour later, the powerful armored cruiser SMS Sankt Georg had reached the scene.

[13][14] Following the end of the war in November 1918, the Regia Marina demobilized; severely reduced naval budgets—the result of a weakened Italian economy in the early 1920s—led to further draw-downs.

[15][16] Marsala's engines were plagued with problems throughout her career, which made the ship an obvious target in the effort to trim the Regia Marina's budget.