The status of VIRGO

International audience; The experience acquired during the commissioning phase of the VIRGO interferometer between September 2003 and August 2005 suggested some major detector upgrades to reach its design sensitivity. The detector shut down, started in September 2005 and concluded in January 2006, was devoted to the implementation of such up-grades. After the installation of a new Power Recycling mirror together with a new suspended Injection Bench, a second commissioning phase started to debug the up-grades acquiring experience in operating the interferometer for long data taking periods. To this purpose different Week-end Science Runs (WSR) have been organized to test the detector performance and its reliability as well as to prepare the transition to a long scientific data taking period (VSR1) started on May 18, 2007. In this article the main features of the VIRGO detector together with its present status and the scheduled up-grades devoted to the design sensitivity improvement, are presented.