Isidor I. Rabi Institute
From Poor Clares’ monastery to scientific institute
The Isidor I. Rabi Institute in Erice occupies the former Poor Clares’ monastery beside San Pietro and is now a principal centre of the Ettore Majorana Foundation.
Key facts
Site type:
Comune:
Research institute, Auditorium
District:
Historic centre
The Isidor I. Rabi Institute occupies the former monastery of the Poor Clares adjoining the Church of San Pietro in Erice. The two complexes are connected by a 16th-century overpass spanning Via Gian Filippo Guarnotti, a surviving reminder of their original relationship. Following the suppression of religious orders in 1866, the monastery passed to civic use and became an orphanage known as the Opera Pia San Rocco.
In the later 20th century the complex was assigned to the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture and restored as one of its institutes. It was named after the American physicist Isidor I. Rabi, one of the scientists who signed the Centre’s constitutive act in Geneva on 8 May 1962. The Foundation subsequently expanded into several historic religious complexes in Erice, including the former San Domenico convent, now the Patrick M. S. Blackett Institute, and the former San Francesco convent, now the Eugene P. Wigner Institute, adapting them for scientific teaching, research and residential programmes.
Today the Rabi Institute forms the Foundation’s administrative hub, housing its Directorate, main Secretariat and the Richard P. Feynman lecture hall. The complex also provides accommodation for participants in the Centre’s residential courses and houses the Alberto Gabriele Seismic Network.
Photo: Elymian Atlas
Explore further
From San Rocco to the Rabi Institute
The former monastery’s long association with San Pietro changed after the suppression of religious orders in 1866. Transferred to civic use, it became an orphanage under the name Opera Pia San Rocco. The historical name survives in the designation Istituto Rabi–San Rocco and in Foundation references to the complex as San Rocco.
Its later conversion for the Ettore Majorana Foundation represents another change of function: spaces originally created for a religious community, and subsequently used for charitable purposes, were adapted for international scientific teaching and administration.
Isidor I. Rabi and the Majorana Centre
The institute takes its name from Isidor Isaac Rabi, one of the physicists involved in establishing the scientific institution that developed into the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture.
On 8 May 1962, Rabi joined John Stewart Bell, Patrick Blackett, Victor Weisskopf and Antonino Zichichi in signing the Centre’s constitutive act in Geneva. The first scientific programmes were held in Erice the following year. The Rabi Institute therefore commemorates one of the scientists associated with the Centre from its foundation.
The Alberto Gabriele Seismic Network
The institute houses the Centre’s Polo Sismico, formally known as the Alberto Gabriele Seismic Network. Established in 1981, it connects seismological detectors across Italy, receiving signals used to detect and locate seismic events.
The Foundation describes it as the first worldwide network of seismological detectors. Its Erice station receives 22 inputs from sites across Italy.
The Piersanti Mattarella Tower of Thought
Within the Rabi Institute complex is the Piersanti Mattarella Tower of Thought, a historic tower associated with visiting scientists working and reflecting at the Centre. It is named after Piersanti Mattarella, who supported the institution in his political role in Sicily.
On 21 August 2016 the tower was inaugurated as the 30th Historic Site recognised by the European Physical Society, marking its place in the scientific history of the Centre.
Sources & further reading
Explore the institutional, scientific and heritage sources used to trace the complex from its origins as a Poor Clares’ monastery to its present role within the Ettore Majorana Foundation.