Neutrino Astronomy at the South Pole: Status of the AMANDA Experiment

AMANDA (Antarctic Muon And Neutrino Detector Array) is a neutrino telescope built under the southern polar icecap, and its scope is exploring the possibility to detect high energy cosmic neutrinos generated by powerful celestial objects where acceleration mechanisms can bring protons up to 10^20 eV. We describe the achievements and results from the AMANDA-B10 prototype and the preliminary results from the current AMANDA-II detector showing a dramatic increase in sensitivity. An outlook on IceCube will be given.