This article was supposed to be on ‘multivariate splines». An informal survey, taken recently by asking various people in Approximation Theory what they consider to be a ‘multivariate spline’, resulted in the answer that a multivariate spline is a possibly smooth piecewise polynomial function of several arguments. In particular the potentially very useful thin-plate spline was thought to belong more to the subject of radial basis funtions than in the present article. This is all the more surprising to me since I am convinced that the variational approach to splines will play a much greater role in multivariate spline theory than it did or should have in the univariate theory. Still, as there is more than enough material for a survey of multivariate piecewise polynomials, this article is restricted to this topic, as is indicated by the (changed) title.