On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments operating at the CERN Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of a new particle compatible with the Higgs boson, which is a crucial piece for our understanding of fundamental physics and thus the structure and evolution of the universe.

This Lecture describes the unprecedented instruments and challenges that have allowed such an accomplishment, the physics meaning and relevance of this discovery, and the present understanding of the properties of this very special particle.