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This chapter aims to look at the properties of large helium nanodroplets from two different perspectives: a.) helium droplets as hosts for assembling and studying clusters at low temperatures; and b.) helium droplets as systems to be studied on their own. First, the thermodynamics and excitations in large droplets are presented, followed by a primer on the droplets’ rate of cooling in vacuum. The chapter then proceeds with the description on producing and characterising the droplets. This subject is followed by a discussion on the kinetics for different regimes of cluster aggregation, such as that for single- and multiple-centre aggregation. Then, experiments involving the spectroscopy of the foreign particles and the deposition of metallic clusters for electron microscopy studies are described. Finally, results from recent x-ray coherent diffractive imaging experiments with pure and doped helium nanodroplets are summarised.