During the pre-war period, she also made lengthy trips abroad, including a tour of South America from May to October 1929 and a deployment to China from January to June 1932 to protect Italian nationals during the Chinese Civil War.

She carried a pair of IMAM Ro.43 seaplanes for aerial reconnaissance; the hangar was located in under the forecastle and a fixed catapult was mounted on the centerline at the bow.

The completed hull was scheduled to be launched on 4 September 1927, but sabotage from anti-fascist workers in the shipyard, who had mixed sand into the grease on the slipway, preventing the ship from sliding down into the water.

After repeated attempts to complete the launching, the shipyard had to resort to dragging Trento from the slipway on 4 October 1927 using the passenger ship SS Principe di Udine.

[1][5] On 11 May 1929, Trento became the flagship of the Cruiser Division; five days later, she and her sister Trieste began a cruise in the northern Mediterranean, which included a stop in Barcelona.

Over the following three months, she visited Cape Verde, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Bahía Blanca, Las Palmas, and Tangiers, before arriving back in Italy on 10 October.

In mid-1931, she entered the drydock in La Spezia for modifications to her tripod foremast; a sturdier five-legged version was installed to reduce vibration in the fire control director.

The two ships then departed, bound for China, where they reinforced the Italian Far East Division, which included the old protected cruiser Libia and the gunboats Sebastiano Caboto and Ermanno Carlotto.

[5] On 6–7 July 1933, Trento took part in a major fleet review held in the Gulf of Naples for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

Another naval review was held in the Gulf of Naples on 27 November 1936, to honor the Regent of Hungary, Miklós Horthy, who was visiting Italy at the time.

[5] The ship participated in another fleet review on 5 May 1938, this one held in honor of German dictator Adolf Hitler's state visit to Italy.

Another cruise in the eastern Mediterranean followed on 9 July, during which Trento stopped in Tripoli, Tobruk, Rhodes, and Leros, before returning to Taranto on the 29th of the month.

Trento, Trieste, and Bolzano were ordered to relieve the Italian light forces at 08:00, though this was far too late to save Artigliere, which was sunk about an hour later.

[10][11] The battlecruiser HMS Renown intervened to protect the British cruisers, which forced Campioni to commit the battleship Vittorio Veneto to the battle.

Two weeks later, on 27 March, the division—at this time commanded by Rear Admiral Luigi Sansonetti—sortied with the rest of the fleet for a major sweep toward the island of Crete.

[13][14] At 06:55 on the 28th, an IMAM Ro.43 floatplane launched by Vittorio Veneto located a British cruiser squadron, and by 07:55, Trento and the 3rd Division had come within visual range.

Seventeen minutes later, the Italian cruisers opened fire from a range of 24,000 yd (22,000 m), initiating the first phase of the Battle of Cape Matapan; in the span of the next forty minutes, Trento fired a total of 204 armor-piercing shells, though trouble with her rangefinders and the extreme range of the action prevented her from scoring any significant hits.

By about 11:00, Vittorio Veneto had closed the distance enough to open fire, prompting Sansonetti to turn his three cruisers back to join the fight.

While the two sides were still maneuvering, a group of British torpedo bombers from Crete arrived and unsuccessfully attacked Trento and the rest of her division shortly after 12:00.

The following day, the fleet encountered British forces covering a merchant ship steaming to Malta, leading to the inconclusive First Battle of Sirte.

On 22 March 1942, Trento joined the battleship Littorio, the cruisers Gorizia and Giovanni delle Bande Nere, and several destroyers in an attempt to intercept a British convoy.

[21] Two Italian destroyers, Lanciere and Scirocco, foundered in heavy weather after the battle; Trento attempted to come to their aid, but they sank before she could reach them.

[13] On 14 June, Trento left Taranto with Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, Gorizia, and the light cruisers Giuseppe Garibaldi and Emanuele Filiberto Duca d'Aosta to attack the British convoy from Alexandria steaming to Malta in Operation Harpoon.

Some of the escorting destroyers laid a smoke screen to hide the ship from further attacks and tried to tow her back to port, but at 09:10, the British submarine Umbra torpedoed the crippled cruiser.