(ricevuto il 21 Febbraio 1991; revisionato il 18 Luglio 1991; approvato il 29 Luglio 1991) Summary. --A review of acquisitions and of unresolved problems concerning Fcentres in alkali halides is presented. The main conclusions are a) the temperature dependence of the bands is mainly due to the thermal expansion for the absorption process and to electron-phonon interaction for the emission process: for the latter half-width and Huang-Rhys factor values are related to the transverse optical frequency ones; b) the lifetime VR of the relaxed excited state is not intrinsic at low temperature because of the interaction between F-and a-centres always present in real samples; c) even though the absolute quantum yield decreases when F-centre concentration increases, the relative quantum yield vr is unaffected by change on F-centre concentration, strongly evidencing a nonhomogeneous distribution of F-centres in real samples; d) a temperature-dependent fine structure in zR (an Vr) values is observed but only when temperature control of the samples is better than a few hundredth of a degree: this effect has been interpreted in terms of interactions which involve F-, a-and F'-centres. PACS 61.70 -Defects in crystals. PACS 61.70.Dx -Colour centres.