  These lectures give an introduction and the current status of flavour physics
in the quark sector, with special attention to the CKM matrix and CP violation.
We describe the measurements which contribute to the determination of the CKM
matrix elements and how, together with important theoretical developments, they
have significantly improved our knowledge on the flavour sector of the Standard
Model. These lectures are complemented by the seminar of U. Mallik (see these
proceedings) which describes in more details the most recent CP-violating
related measurements by the B-factories. The results presented are up-to-date
till winter 2004.
