The study of the existence and uniqueness of a preferred Kähler metric on a given complex manifold M is a very important area of research. In this talk we recall the main results and open questions for the most important canonical metrics (Einstein, constant scalar curvature, extremal, Kähler-Ricci solitons) in the compact and the non-compact case, then we consider a particular class of complex domains D in C n , the so-called Hartogs domains, which can be equipped with a natural Kaehler metric g. We show that if g is a Kähler-Einstein, constant scalar curvature, extremal or a soliton metric then (D, g) is holomorphically isometric to an open subset of the n-dimensional complex hyperbolic space. If D is bounded, we also show the same assertion under the assumption that g is a scalar multiple of the Bergman metric. The results we present are proved in papers joint with A. Loi and A. J. Di Scala ([11], [20]). 1. Canonical metrics: existence and uniqueness 1.1. The compact case Let M be a complex manifold, with complex structure J. Let g be a Kähler metric on M , i.e. a J-invariant Riemannian metric such that the associated Kähler form ω, defined by ω(v, w) = g(Jv, w), is closed. In this talk we are interested in those Kähler metrics on M which are canonical in the sense that they are minima of natural geometric functionals on M or arise as limits of important geometric flows like the Kähler-Ricci flow. In order to give the precise definitions, let us fix some notations. Let Ric g denote the Ricci tensor of (M, g) and let ρ ω be its Ricci form defined by ρ ω (v, w) = Ric g (Jv, w) (we will omit the subscript ω when the context is clear). If, in a chart endowed with complex coordinates z 1 , .