Italian battleships were designed taking into account the political and strategic situation of their time. Italy was in an alliance with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and France was considered its main potential enemy, whose fleet could be strengthened by British ships. So, mainly Italian and French ships were compared with each other, although later, during the First World War, developments led Italy to an alliance with the Entente. Since the Dante Alighieri was laid down only in 1909, the Admiralty understood that it risked getting a ship already inferior to foreign ones. Therefore, they soon designed a new type of battleships, which, on the one hand, continued the line of the Dante Alighieri, and on the other embodied the features of the most modern battleships - the descendants of the Dreadnought.