The Verrazzano Historical Studies Center has been continuously active in collecting and enhancing various references to the Navigator.

Launched in 1928, the light explorer vessel—later reclassified as a destroyer—Giovanni da Verrazzano became part of the group of twelve “Navigators” of the Royal Italian Navy on September 25, 1930. In 1936–37, it took part in military operations related to the Spanish Civil War; during the Second World War it operated across much of the Mediterranean south of Sicily, and in 1940 participated in bombing actions in the Aegean against the Greek and Albanian coasts. Intercepted and torpedoed by enemy submarines, it sank off the coast of Lampedusa on October 19, 1942.