The exploration of Venus is as old as interplanetary exploration itself and started when Mariner 2 encountered Venus in 1962. Six decades of exploration later, however, Venus remains an enigmatic planet. Its bulk properties – such as size and bulk density – are very similar to Earth’s, but Venus presents a hostile face with hellish surface conditions that likely inhibit the formation of life and complicate exploration with in-situ spacecrafts. Yet, understanding Venus – at present and its past – is so important for our understanding of Earth by providing a unique archive potentially analogous to the early Earth. Remote sensing has delivered various observables with which the state of Venus’ atmosphere and of the volcano-tectonic processes shaping the surface can be deciphered. But a major difficulty remains the lack of sufficient temporal constraints with which the observations can be brought into a meaningful evolution of Venus through geological time. The available data in combination with ever-advancing modelling techniques for the planet’s interior have suggested several evolutionary pathways, however, no option can yet be preferred. The key question why Venus’ evolution diverged from the Earth’s remains poorly understood. In this presentation, I will summarise what we know about Venus from the available data and from state-of-the-art dynamic modelling. I will emphasise the limits of what we know, will outline what we still need to find out, and how the confirmed missions to Venus – Veritas, DaVinci, and EnVision – will hopefully boost our insight.