The physics of strong interactions is undoubtedly one of the most challenging areas of modern science. The PANDA experiment will be devoted to charmonium spectroscopy, gluonic excitations (hybrids, glueballs), open and hidden charm in nuclei, gamma-ray spectroscopy of hypernuclei, and selected other topics, which will be studied with unprecedented accuracy. In this overview article we introduce the physics case and the detector array.