This review article is focused on the tremendous progress realized during the last fifteen years in the understanding of multifragmentation and its relationship to the liquid-gas phase diagram of nuclei and nuclear matter. The explosion of the whole
nucleus, early predicted by Bohr [N. Bohr, Nature 137 (1936) 351], is a very complex and rich subject which continues to fascinate nuclear physicists as well as theoreticians who extend the thermodynamics of phase transitions to finite systems.
