Construction was delayed by late deliveries of the 305-millimeter guns and armor plates as well as shortages of labor. The Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912 diverted workers at the shipyards for repairs and maintenance of the ships participating in the war. The Italians imported the raw nickel steel for their armor from America and Britain and processed it into their equivalent of Krupp cemented armor, called Terni cemented, but there were problems with this process and suitable plates took longer to produce than planned. The ships of the "Conte di Cavour" class were long at the waterline, and overall. They had a beam of , and a draft of . They displaced at normal load, and at deep load. The "Conte di Cavour" class was provided with a complete double bottom and their hulls were subdivided by 23 longitudinal and transverse bulkheads. The ships had two rudders, both on the centerline. They had a crew of 31 officers and 969 enlisted men. The original machinery for all three ships consisted of three Parsons steam turbine sets, arranged in three engine rooms. The center engine room housed one set of turbines that drove the two inner propeller shafts. It was flanked by compartments on either side, each housing one turbine set which powered the outer shafts. Steam for the turbines was provided by 20 Blechynden water-tube boilers in "Conte di Cavour" and "Leonardo da Vinci", eight of which burned oil and twelve of which burned both oil and coal. "Giulio Cesare" used a dozen each oil-fired and mixed-firing Babcock & Wilcox boilers. Designed to reach a maximum speed of , none of the ships reached this goal on their sea trials, despite generally exceeding the rated power of their turbines. They only achieved speeds ranging from using . The ships could store a maximum of of coal and of fuel oil that gave them a range of at , and at . Each ship was equipped with three turbo generators that provided a total of 150 kilowatts at 110 volts. As built, the ships' main armament comprised thirteen 46-caliber 305-millimeter guns, designed by Armstrong Whitworth and Vickers, in five gun turrets. The turrets were all on the centerline, with a twin-gun turret superfiring over a triple-gun turret in fore and aft pairs, and a third triple turret amidships, designated 'A', 'B', 'Q', 'X', and 'Y' from bow to stern.