This article summarizes the short lecture on gantries given at the “Hadrontherapy: status and perspectives. Development of a hadrontherapy facility: learning from the existing” event.

An introduction to gantries is given describing what a gantry is and which are the main difficulties and choices for an ion gantry. The gantry design activities ongoing at CNAO are shortly described.

The first part of the lecture and of the article describes some of the main choices to be made when designing a carbon ion gantry. The second part of the lecture reports shortly about the activities ongoing at CNAO within the HITRIplus and the EuroSIG projects.

Carbon ion gantries are large, complicated and expensive objects and presently only three gantries for carbon are operational worldwide. The design of a gantry can be optimized in many ways and in many respects. In the paper, without the ambition of being exhaustive, some of the main choices are illustrated and the pros and cons of the possible options are discussed. Finally the gantry design activities ongoing in the EuroSIG collaboration and in the HITRIplus project are shortly reported.