  We review the observational evidence showing that luminous cluster elliptical
galaxies are old stellar systems, undergoing mostly passive stellar evolution
up to redshift $z\approx 1$, with approximate coeval epoch of formation. This
scenario is supported by observations of local early--types, collected by 2m --
4m class telescopes, and fits the recently gained high resolution imaging
(given by the refurbished HST) and deep spectroscopic data coming from 4m
telescopes of $z\approx 0.4$ cluster ellipticals. Up to $z\approx 1$,
luminosity functions, colors and surface brightnesses provide further evidence
for mild evolution of massive cluster ellipticals.
  The new 8m class telescopes and in particular the VLT with its imaging and
multiplex spectroscopic instruments will give further essential information on
early--type galaxy evolution over the full galaxy mass--spectrum and as a
function of environment, disk--to--bulge ratio and other parameters. The VLT
will also allow to explore the possibility to use evolution--calibrated massive
ellipticals as cosmological standard candles/rods.

Astrophysics