A review of the status of the most crucial issues in particle physics at the start of the LHC is presented. The main questions are related to electroweak symmetry breaking and the mystery of new physics at the TeV scale, that is reasonably expected to be nearby and yet must be very peculiar because it was not seen at LEP and in flavour physics experiments. The main current ideas on models will be discussed and their implications for LHC searches, dark matter etc.
