  We briefly describe the main features of the Brera Multi-Wavelet (BMW) survey
of serendipitous X-ray clusters, based on the still unexploited ROSAT-HRI
archival observations. Cluster candidates are selected from the general BMW
catalogue of 20,000 sources based exclusively on their X-ray extension.
Contrary to common wisdom, a clever selection of the HRI energy channels allows
us to significantly reduce the background noise, thus greatly improving the
ability to detect low surface-brightness sources as clusters. The resulting
sample of ~250 candidates shows a very good sky coverage down to a flux
\~3x10^-14 erg/s/cm^2 ([0.5-2.0] keV band), i.e comparable to existing
PSPC-based deep survey, with a particularly interesting area of ~100 sq.deg.
around fluxes ~10^-13 erg/s/cm^2, i.e. where highly-luminous, rare systems at
z~0.6-1 can be detected. At the same time, the superior angular resolution of
the instrument should avoid biases against intrinsically small systems, while
easing the identification process (e.g. by spotting blends and AGN
contaminants). While about 20% of the candidates are already identified with
groups/clusters at z<0.3 on the DSS2 images, we have started a deep CCD imaging
campaign to observe all sources associated to "blank fields". First results
from these observations reveal a distant (z>0.5) bonafide cluster counterpart
for ~80% of the targets.
