Recently, the observation of very high-energy radiations and particles from the cosmos has opened up a new and challenging field. These high-energy “cosmic messengers” are gamma rays, charged particles, and neutrinos. Their energies can extend to energies many more orders of magnitude higher than those produced by man-made accelerators. The origin of these cosmic radiations and particles is currently one of the main questions in the Astroparticle Physics. They can be linked to the most violent objects of the Universe, often involving huge massive black holes.

As these cosmic messengers are rare and difficult to detect, the technique employed requires deployment of large area detectors and use of large volume natural detector media (atmosphere, see water, ice).In this talk some of these experiments, with emphasis on high-energy cosmic rays and gamma rays, are described and the most recent results are presented.