The aim of the talk is to give a brief introductory overview on manganese oxides.
Starting  from the  parent undoped compound ${\rm LaMnO_{3}}$ the complexity of the physics that arises due to the  existence of a number of relevant degree's of freedom (charge/magnetic/orbital/lattice) in these systems will be discussed  together with the key experiments that serves as guide for theoretical understanding of these materials.
The discussion will be mainly focused on half-doped systems exhibiting variety of charge,magnetically and orbitally ordered states and  comparison of the experimental phases
digram with that predicted from analyses of microscopic models will be given.