On 16 February last, the Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, visited the INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratories, together with the 2021 Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Giorgio Parisi, and met the scientific community during an event in the presence of the Minister of University and Research, Maria Cristina Messa, and with the participation of local institutions. The Prime Minister also wanted to celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, which fell on 11 February last, with the researchers of the largest underground laboratory in the world dedicated to astroparticle physics. Prime Minister Draghi was welcomed and accompanied in the large underground experimental rooms of the Gran Sasso Laboratories by INFN President Antonio Zoccoli and by the Director of the Laboratories, Ezio Previtali. Here Mario Draghi met the researchers who work there, together with colleagues from all over the world, and who accompanied him on a visit to discover the large flagship experiments that make the Gran Sasso Laboratories not only one of the main research infrastructures in Italy, but also a world-class laboratory in fundamental physics research, particularly in dark matter and neutrino physics. At the end of the visit, the Prime Minister continued the meeting with the scientific and institutional community during an event hosted in the Laboratories on ground level.
