Magnetic monopoles

These are notes of the first part of the lectures given at the JINR-ISU Baikal Summer School on Physics of Elementary Particles and Astrophysics (July 2010). I review classical monopole solutions of the SU (2) Yang-Mills-Higgs theory providing a pedagogical introduction into to the theory of non-Abelian monopoles both in the BPS limit and beyond of it. I briefly discuss monopole dynamics, the idea of the moduli space and some of the basic properties which are connected with the field theoretical aspects of these classical solutions.