AGN obscuration and the unified model

We review the continuum emission of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) over the entire electromagnetic spectrum. After a brief historical intro- duction, we describe the main spectral properties of unobscured AGN, discussing the selection biases which prevent us from having a complete view of the AGN population in the universe, and trying to build an updated spectral energy distribution of optically selected quasars. In the second part of the review, we describe the spectral properties of ob- scured AGN. Finally, we discuss the main observational methods in the different wavelength bands for disentangling AGN and stellar emission, and the ability of these methods to find new (mainly obscured) AGN, a significant fraction of which are probably still missing in current surveys.