The group included 29 women and 31 minors and their rickety wooden boat was intercepted by a border guard vessel off the coast of Syracuse in Sicily.
Border guards said the pilot of the boat, which measures around 15 metres in length, was Egyptian and had tried to avoid detection.
"They were spotted just a few miles from the coast," said local border guard official Antonino Spampinato, as the refugees were helped off the boat in port.
He said the region around Syracuse had seen only very few migrant arrivals until May of this year but that 5,000 have arrived over June, July and August.
Watch the video of the migrants arriving on the Italian coast:
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