Gran Sasso? Is that the mountain of the rescue of Mussolini by germans paratroopers?
Basically, yes. The parking lot were most of the hiking trails start -at the end of the paved road- is just in front of the hotel were Mussolini was detained after the armistice.
The hotel is the red building in this picture, at an elevation of 2.130mt (roughly 7.000feet). The white one on the left is the cableway station that goes up from the valley (1.010 meters, or 3.320 feet below), the one in the back is an astronomical observatory, while the smaller one on the right is a ski-lift for winter skiing. The paved road (not visible in the picture) comes up with a few switchbacks from the right after crossing the entire plateau.
The road did not exist during WWII so the cableway was effectively the only way to go up (the skii area did not exist either in WWII, and I'm not too sure that the observatory was there as well).
The mountain in the background is Corno Grande, the highest peak of the Gran Sasso range and the highest of the entire Appennine chain, standing 2.912 meters tall (a bit over 9.560 feet).