Analogue gravity is a research programme that investigates analogues of general relativistic gravitational fields within various physical systems, especially, but not limited to, condensed matter systems. This approach aims to gain new insights into related problems in physics. Analogue models of gravity have a long and distinguished history, which developed over the last 40 years from theory to experiments. In this talk, I will highlight the main achievements in this field and discuss the valuable lessons it has provided so far. These include its role as a simulator of quantum field theory in curved spacetimes, and in our understanding of the robustness of Hawking radiation, and as a toy model for emergent gravity scenarios, addressing issues like the information loss problem and the potential origin of the cosmological constant.
