  These are expanded notes of lectures given at the Advanced Summer School on
Modern Mathematical Physics (JINR Dubna, July 2005) and at the 8th
International School-Seminar ``The actual problems of microworld physics 2005''
(Gomel-Dubna, August 2005). I review classical monopole solutions of the SU(N)
Yang-Mills-Higgs theory. The first part is a pedagogical introduction into to
the theory of non-Abelian SU(2) monopoles. In the second part I discuss a
particular case of SU(3) theories containing different limits of symmetry
breaking. It turns out that the multimonopole configurations are natural in a
model with the gauge group of higher rank. Here I discuss fundamental and
composite monopoles and consider the limiting situation of the massless states.
In the last part I briefly discuss construction of the $N = 2$ SU(2)
supersymmetric monopoles and some of the basic properties which are connected
with the field theoretical aspects of these classical solutions.
