Interferometry in the optical and near infrared has so far played a marginal role in Extragalactic Astronomy. Active Galactic Nuclei are the brightest and most compact extragalactic sources, nonetheless only a very limited number could be studied with speckle interferometry and none with long baseline interferometry. The VLTI will allow the study of moderately faint extragalactic objects with very high spatial resolution thus opening a new window on the universe. With this paper we focus on three scientific cases to show how AMBER and MIDI can be used to tackle open issues in extragalactic astronomy.

invited contribution, to appear in the proceedings of the JENAM 2002 Workshop WS-VLTI "The Very Large Telescope Interferometer: Challenges for the Future", Editors: P.J.V. Garcia, A. Glindemann, Th. Henning, F. Malbet, Ap&SS, Kluwer, in press