The environment plays a key role in the formation and evolution of galaxies. Clusters of galaxies are the most massive and virialized structures known in the Universe and therefore are the ideal laboratories for the study of environmental processes in galaxies. It is not an easy task to discern, between the properties of galaxies, which have been

The Local Group (LG) offers us a chance to test the present scenario of galaxy formation in ways that are impossible elsewhere. It contains about 50 know galaxies, most of which are dwarfs so faint that they would not be detected beyond the LG. Hence, ourunderstanding of low-mass galaxy formation physics, strongly tied to models of galaxy feedback

Galaxy discs are made of two components, the thin and the thick disc. Thick discs contain up to 50% of the baryonic mass of a galaxy. Because their stars are among the oldest in the Universe, thick discs are relics of the infancy of galaxies. Thus, understanding the origin of thick discs is key to unveil how galaxies themselves form, which in turn

High-resolution, high-stability spectroscopy is crucial for the precise determination of radial velocities and the detailed chemical analysis of stars in different contexts of the Galaxy. The ESPRESSO and HORuS spectrographs, in operation on the VLT and GTC telescopes since mid-2018, are already contributing significantly to our knowledge of

In a Universe dominated by Cold Dark Matter (CDM), the growth of galaxies is expected to happen hierarchically: mergers of small systems eventually create a giant galaxy. This theory has been very successful at describing the evolution of Mpc-size structures (such as filaments and galaxy clusters) and it seems to work well for massive ellipticals