  The physical motivations and the basic construction rules for Type I strings
and M-theory compactifications are reviewed in light of the recent
developments. The first part contains the basic theoretical ingredients needed
for building four-dimensional supersymmetric models, models with broken
supersymmetry and for computing low-energy actions and quantum corrections to
them. The second part contains some phenomenological applications to brane
world scenarios with low values of the string scale and large extra dimensions.
