  The interaction rate of hypothesised dark matter particles in an Earth-bound
detector is expected to undergo an annual modulation due to the planet's
orbital motion. The DAMA experiment has observed such a modulation with high
significance in an array of scintillating NaI(Tl) crystals. This claim is still
unverified inasmuch as the other experiments involved in this research use
different dark matter targets and cannot be compared with DAMA in a
model-independent way. The SABRE experiment seeks to provide a much-needed
model-independent test by developing highly pure NaI(Tl) crystal detectors with
very low radioactivity and deploying them into an active veto detector that can
reject key backgrounds in a dark matter measurement. The final layout of SABRE
will consist of a pair of twin detectors at LNGS (Laboratori Nazionali del Gran
Sasso, Italy) and SUPL (Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory, Australia). The
combined analysis of data sets from the two hemispheres will allow to identify
any terrestrial contribution to the modulating signal. This article gives an
overview of the detector design together with the results of Monte Carlo
simulations and of the status of SABRE proof-of-principle activities at LNGS.
