[1] Her propulsion system consisted of one single-expansion, horizontal, 2-cylinder steam engine that drove a single screw propeller that was 6.62 m (21.7 ft) in diameter.

To supplement the steam engine, Lissa was originally fitted with a full ship rig with 3,112 square meters (33,500 sq ft).

[1][2][4] Lissa was a casemate ship, and she was armed with a main battery of twelve 9-inch (229 mm) breech-loading guns manufactured by Krupp's Essen Works.

Ten of these were mounted in a central, armored battery that fired on the broadside only, with the gun ports 1.96 m (6 ft 5 in) above the waterline.

[1] Lissa was laid down on 27 June 1867 at the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino (STT) shipyard in San Marco.

[7] Nevertheless, Lissa was assigned to the active squadron in November 1871, relieving the ironclad Habsburg as the flagship of the unit, commanded by Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Alois von Pokorny.

Lissa and the rest of the unit, which also included the screw corvettes Zrinyi and Dandolo and the gunboat Hum, spent the remainder of the year carrying out tactical training in the Adriatic Sea.

On 15 January 1872, the entire squadron sailed from Pola to the Dalmatian islands for tactical training exercises.

The active squadron had left the area by mid-July to carry out tactical training off the island of Corfu, Greece, beginning on 16 July.

[11] Lissa served as the flagship of the active squadron of the Austro-Hungarian fleet in 1873; that year, it also included the screw corvettes Zrinyi and Fasana and the gunboat Velebich.

In early September, Lissa was at Smyrna in the Ottoman Empire, while Zrinyi was in Greek waters and Fasana was en route to join Velebich off Spain.

On 24 September, she sailed for Port Said in Ottoman Egypt, where she replenished her coal stocks and conducted shooting practice.

Lissa departed Smyrna two days later, bound for Malta, where she marked the 25th anniversary of the reign of Franz Joseph in company with the Russian ironclad Kniaz Pozharsky.

[10] By 1880, the ship's hull was badly rotten, and so Lissa was taken into drydock at the Pola Arsenal, where the shipyard workers stripped off much of the vessel's armor plate to replace the deteriorated timber with new wood.

[4] Lissa took part in the fleet exercises held in June 1885, where she served as the flagship of the ironclad squadron.

She received further modifications during this period, with torpedo launchers added in 1885 and new quick-firing versions of her main battery guns were installed.