This contribution reviews recent trends and potentials in the synthesis of advanced nanoporous materials. The discovery of these materials has accelerated the development of methods of their characterization. The first part of this review describes the characterstics of typical organized mesoporous silicas. For the preparation of templated mesoporous silicas, many synthetic routes have been developed. Recent advances in this field are presented and structural and morphological properties of resulting materials are described in the second part. In the third part, the incorporation of aluminum into the pore walls is briefly summarized. The last part is devoted to the composite micro/mesoporous materials with the special emphasis on the composites involving nanozeolitic particles.