  A review is presented of the development and current status of nuclear
shell-model calculations in which the two-body effective interaction is derived
from the free nucleon-nucleon potential. The significant progress made in this
field within the last decade is emphasized, in particular as regards the
so-called V-low-k approach to the renormalization of the bare nucleon-nucleon
interaction. In the last part of the review we first give a survey of realistic
shell-model calculations from early to present days. Then, we report recent
results for neutron-rich nuclei near doubly magic 132Sn and for the whole
even-mass N=82 isotonic chain. These illustrate how shell-model effective
interactions derived from modern nucleon-nucleon potentials are able to provide
an accurate description of nuclear structure properties.
