  Spatially-resolved spectroscopy of the elliptical galaxy M87 with the MECS
instrument on board BeppoSAX demonstrates that the hard X-ray power-law tail,
originally discovered by ASCA (Matsumoto et al 1996; Allen et al. 1999),
originates in the innermost 2'. Our results are consistent with it being
produced in an Accretion Dominated Flow, although a substantial jet
contribution cannot be ruled out. An origin from a Seyfert-like nucleus is
disfavored by our data. As a by-product of this result, we present an analysis
of the thermal emission coming from the center of the Virgo cluster, which
exhibits a strong positive radial temperature gradient, along with a radial
decrease of the iron abundance.
