Investigating X-ray luminous galaxy clusters at high redshift provides
a challenging but fundamental constraint on evolutionary studies of
the largest virialized structures in the Universe, the baryonic matter
component in form of the hot intracluster medium (ICM), their galaxy
populations, and the effects of the mysterious Dark Energy. I will
discuss the status and prospects of the XMM-Newton Distant Cluster
Project (XDCP), a new generation serendipitous X-ray survey focused on
the most distant galaxy clusters at z>1. Based on the analysis of 80
deg^2 of deep XMM-Newton archival X-ray data, we have selected some
250 distant cluster candidates, followed-up by optical/NIR two-band
imaging, and the ongoing spectroscopic confirmation of currently about
two dozen systems. I will present multi-wavelength properties of
recently discovered high-z clusters and discuss preliminary
implications for the evolution of BCGs and early type galaxies in
cluster environments.