In local universe, early - type galaxies  represent only 20% of the total
number of galaxies, but contribute for more than 60% to the total mass.
As a consequence, the comprehension of the mechanisms driving the stellar
mass accretion in spheroids is a fundamental step to understand the
universe we see today.

In the last five years, deep HST surveys have given a boost to our
knowledge on early-type galaxies, erasing some doubts and
opening new ones.
In this talk I present some of the recent results, both on local and
high-z (z~2) spheroids, which allow us to gain insight on and to constrain
their stellar mass assembly history.