The Ultraviolet Echelle Spectrograph, built by the ESO Optical Instrumentation Department, was the third instrument installed at the ESO VLT. The presentation summarizes the history of the project starting from the scientific drivers, the performance goals, the adopted optical concept, down to the installation at the Nasmyth focus of UT2 in 1999, the performance on sky and the scientific results of the first year of observations. UVES reports today 20 years of successful operation and almost 2000 scientific papers.