Strangeness has opened a new dimension in nuclear physics: owing to the presence
of the strange quark the 
-N interaction displays unique features
which are reflected in many of the facets of the hypernuclear structure.
Through the understanding of these features one can obtain information on the
-N interaction.
Examples of these are the remarkable stability of the 
Hartree field
(even the deep lying orbits are well defined), the absence of spin--orbit
splitting in the single particle levels, the occurrence in the spectra of states
unfolding new symmetries. It would also be fascinating to explore the
manifestations of the antipairing nature of the 
-N force in the
response functions of hypernuclei, although their transient existence makes
it difficult to achieve this goal.
Note moreover that the 
can act as a probe of the host nucleus.
One can expect that macroscopic parameters such as the nuclear radius
and the moment of inertia will change because of the presence of the
. These effects are small and thus will require the high resolution
experiments mentioned earlier to be detected.
Beyond these phenomena, which are novel with respect to the traditional
nuclear ones, hypernuclear physics is moving in the direction of unifying
nuclear and particle physics. It offers indeed the opportunity, e.g., of
investigating the single hadron properties or, via the 
decay,
the weak interactions in the nuclear medium.
Moreover the non--mesonic decay of a hypernucleus allows to test the 
-N
interaction at short distances, which, as we have seen, has crucial consequences
on the dynamics of the hypernuclei and which is sensitive to sub--hadronic
degrees of freedom.
Finally, in a broader perspective, one can conceive a large set of many--body
baryon systems enlarging the concept of flavour to include the atomic nuclei.
From this viewpoint the 
hypernucleus should just be conceived as
a first step of a ladder. The second step is represented by the S=-2 systems
(double strange). These encompass not only the 
hypernuclei,
but the 
as well, and in particular the H hypernuclei.
Farther up in the ladder lie the fascinating strangelets, the stable droplets of strange matter conjectured by Witten [13], whose existence may be revealed by central collisions of relativistic heavy ions.
A broad spectrum of themes is indeed open to the investigation in the field of flavour nuclei. Unfortunately adverse circumstances (especially the death of KAON) have severely restricted the number of laboratories where this physics is actively pursued: left open are KEK and Brookhaven (BNL).
Dafne, thanks to the effort of the physicists engaged in the FINUDA experiment [16], has thus the opportunity of promoting important advances in a field where a number of interesting questions wait to be answered.