The phi^4 model is a classical model in Mathematical Physics, arising e.g. as a continuous version of the Ising model, as a toy model for a Quantum field theory and it is also closely related to the invariant measures of certain Hamiltonian PDEs. Over the last years a number of new tools from stochastic analysis have been developed to rigorously study measures of this type. In this talk I will review some of the results that have been obtained: I will first discuss a PDE-based construction of the measure before moving on to discussing phase transitions as well as approximations through a discrete particle model.