One of the most important special cases in Newtonian mechanics is the gravitational field generated by a spherically symmetrical mass distribution. This allows, in very good approximation, to describe, e.g., the motion of celestial bodies in the solar system. The spherically symmetric case is also one of the few for which Einstein’s field equations can be solved analytically, and it leads to the Schwarzschild metric. We discuss the properties of this metric in detail and address in particular the topic of black holes. We also discuss important experiments that test the predictions of the Schwarzschild metric, and thus of general relativity.