Wrong navy, she's bigger than a WW1 L class that AFAIK had only 3 guns, she has four (the aft mount is not very visible in the pic) and pretty big ones at that!.
I must be going blind - I could only see 3 guns in your pic Is she perhaps the Tigre then, Leone Class ?
Right navy, wrong ship, the Leone had 8 x 4.7" guns in twin mounts. She didn't make it to WW2 but the WW2 successor to her name has been often (mis)quoted in this thread.
I found some very wrong info about the Tigre then in several places - think there's a net info problem on that ship - will look again later - hope someone else might have a go in the meantime
If it were he sister Leone (lion) I would understand the mix up with Leone Pancaldo (Navigatori class usually referred to as just Pancaldo) but Tigre (tiger) does not lend itself to confusion, the wiki page looks correct. OOPS!! my bad there was a contre torpilleur of the same name (2100t class with 5 x 138mm guns, and she even had a sister called Panthere though the French Lion was from the later 2400t class so Regia Marina and Royale naming were not identical). Big cats are spelled almost the same in most western languages. Our misterry ship was possibly the one that started the trend towards "super destroyers" so she is earlier than either Tigre.
Augusto Riboty? After she dropped half her guns and torpedo mounts. (My source doesn't mention if she dropped two mounts or switched to single gun mounts). On second thought, she may be to big
AFAIK the Riboty always had single mounts, two were were removed in 1942 and two more in 1943. But apart from a brief period in WW1, when she had a 6" on the forecastle, she carried 4" guns. Our mistery ship had 4 x 6" guns making her one of the first "super destroyers". Our ship was scrapped before WW2 while Riboty holds the distinction of having the longest "total mission time" of any WW2 Italian ship.
We have a winner! it is the Premuda/V116, found that pic on an article on the Italian "scouts" and looking at how popular Premuda/Dubrovnik/TA 32 has been on this thread I couldn't resist.
It gave me the motivation to bookmark up most of the good ship sites again after I'd been through them all fifteen or twenty times How about this one;
Likely to be a long time, my first idea was a German Flak ship on an old criser hull, doesn't match any one I have pictures of but general layout fits. Only problem with that theory is the gun mounts look more like quad 40mm Bofors than 105s
I suspect it is British. Probably a conversion of a Channel ferry (likely a train ferry) converted for mine laying.
No, this is not an Axis ship. No, the ship is not British. But, she is a conversion, and at one point in her life she did lay mines.