The lecture is an introduction to the most important issues of cosmology, a discipline studying the origins and history of the development of the Universe. How far is the farthest galaxy (and what is beyond it)? How was the Universe born? When was the big bang (and what was before it)? How does the entirety of the Universe move (and what makes it move)? What is the future of the Universe? These are basic questions of immense interest and to which we are getting increasingly accurate answers. The lecture describes the methods used to answer these questions and the theoretical background. The lecture leaves no doubt that thanks to increasingly more precise measurements and with the dynamics of theoretical thinking affecting measurement strategies cosmology will become a leading natural science discipline in the 21st century.

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