  We review recent results on Integrable Discrete Geometry. It turns out that
most of the known (continuous and/or discrete) integrable systems are
particular symmetries of the quadrilateral lattice, a multidimensional lattice
characterized by the planarity of its elementary quadrilaterals. Therefore the
linear property of planarity seems to be a basic geometric property underlying
integrability. We present the geometric meaning of its tau-function, as the
potential connecting its forward and backward data. We present the theory of
transformations of the quadrilateral lattice, which is based on the discrete
analogue of the theory of rectilinear congruences. In particular, we discuss
the discrete analogues of the Laplace, Combescure, Levy, radial and fundamental
transformations and their interrelations. We also show how the sequence of
Laplace transformations of a quadrilateral surface is described by the discrete
Toda system. We finally show that these classical transformations are strictly
related to the basic operators associated with the quantum field theoretical
formulation of the multicomponent Kadomtsev-Petviashvilii hierarchy. We review
the properties of quadrilateral hyperplane lattices, which play an interesting
role in the reduction theory, when the introduction of additional geometric
structures allows to establish a connection between point and hyperplane
lattices. We present and fully characterize some geometrically distinguished
reductions of the quadrilateral lattice, like the symmetric, circular and
Egorov lattices; we review also basic geometric results of the theory of
quadrilateral lattices in quadrics, and the corresponding analogue of the
Ribaucour reduction of the fundamental transformation.
