An international conference on the condensed state of simple systems was held at Varenna sul Lago di Como, Italy, on the 11th to the 14th of September, 1957. The subject of discussion concerned primarily simple liquids and the melting of crystals. The meeting was at the invitation of the Italian Physical Society and was held in the charming Villa Monastero on the shores of Lake Como. Approximately eighty scientists from over eleven different countries attended. Both experimental papers and theoretical papers on statistical mechanical theory composed the formal part of the program.