In these lectures, I discuss some classes of measurements accessible in heavy ion collisions at the LHC. How can these observables be measured, to what extent can they be calculated, and what do they tell us about the dense mesoscopic system created during the collision? In the first lecture, I shall focus in particular on measurements
that constrain the spatio-temporal picture of the collisions and that measure centrality, orientations and extensions. In the subsequent lectures, I then discuss on how classes of measurements allow one to characterize collective phenomena, and to what extent these measurements can constrain the properties of matter produced in heavy ion collisions.
