VIRGO: a large interferometer for gravitational wave detection started its first scientific run

The VIRGO interferometer is the largest ground based European gravitational wave detector operating at the EGO Laboratory in the Pisa, Italy; countryside. During the last commissioning period relevant progress have been done in approaching its design sensitivity all over the detection bandwidth. Thanks to the effort of the whole Collaboration a long scientific run has been done collecting data for more than 4 months in conjunction with the LIGO detectors. The results obtained from the detector point of view are: a very good stability and a duty-cycle as high as 81% in science mode. In this paper we present the status of the VIRGO interferometer giving an overview of the experimental apparatus together with its most relevant features.