Exact solutions and their interpretation

This is the account of the workshop Exact solutions and their interpretation at the 16-th International Conference on General Relativity and Gravitation held in Durban, July 15-21, 2001. Work reported in 32 oral contributions spanned a wide variety of topics, ranging from exact radiative spacetimes to cosmological solutions. Two invited review talks, on the role of exact solutions in string theory and in cosmology, are also described.