The Wigner Institute forms part of the Ettore Majorana Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture, founded in Erice in 1963 by physicist Antonino Zichichi. It occupies the former monastery of San Francesco.
During the Cold War, the Erice centre became an important meeting place for scientists from the United States and the Soviet Union. Its more than 130 postgraduate schools have welcomed around 160,000 students and thousands of internationally recognised lecturers and researchers, including 158 Nobel laureates.
The Foundation is internationally recognised for advanced education, scientific research and dialogue between scientific cultures.
