  We discuss thermal and dynamical properties of Bose condensates confined by
an external potential. First we analyze the Bose-Einstein transition
temperature for an ideal Bose gas in a generic power-law potential and
d-dimensional space. Then we investigate the effect of the shape of the
trapping potential on the properties of a weakly-interacting Bose condensate.
We show that using exotic trapping potentials the condensate can exhibit
interesting coherent quantum phenomena, like superfluidity and tunneling. In
particular, we consider toroidal and double-well potentials. The theoretical
results are compared with recent experiments.
