Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso (LNGS) is the largest underground research center in the world.

The primary mission of the laboratory is to host experiments that require a low background environment in the fields of astroparticle physics and nuclear astrophysics and other disciplines that can profit of its characteristics and of its infrastructures.

Providing about 3400 metres of water equivalent (mwe) shielding, it is not the deepest underground laboratory, but the fact that it can be driven to without using mine elevators makes it very popular.

[6][7] An effort to determine the Majorana/Dirac nature of the neutrino, called CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events), is operating in the laboratory (as of 2018).

[8] In September 2011, Dario Autiero, a researcher of Institute of Nuclear Physics in Lyons, France, presented preliminary findings that indicated neutrinos produced at CERN were arriving at OPERA detector about 60 ns earlier than they would if they were travelling at the speed of light.

Although the official statement published by OPERA does not declare any anomaly in the velocity of the neutrinos,[12] and therefore the case is completely solved, the development of the story has given the community pause for thought.