Lectures given at the 2nd Session of the Centro Internazionale Matematico Estivo (C.I.M.E.)

The international summer school on Calculus of Variations and Geometric Evolution Problems was held at Cetraro, Italy, 1996. The contributions to this volume reflect quite closely the lectures given at Cetraro which have provided an image of a fairly broad field in analysis where in recent years we have seen many important contributions. Among the topics treated in the courses were variational methods for Ginzburg-Landau equations, variational models for microstructure and phase transitions, a variational treatment of the Plateau problem for surfaces of prescribed mean curvature in Riemannian manifolds - both from the classical point of view and in the setting of geometric measure theory.