This book provides a thorough and self-contained introduction to the theory of commutative Banach algebras, aimed at graduate students with a basic knowledge of functional analysis, topology, complex analysis, measure theory, and group theory. At the core of this text are the chapters on Gelfand's theory, regularity and spectral synthesis. Special emphasis is placed on applications in abstract harmonic analysis and on treating many special classes of commutative Banach algebras, such as uniform algebras, group algebras and Beurling algebras, and tensor products. Detailed proofs and a variety of exercises are given. The book is intended for graduate students taking a course on Banach algebras, with various possible specializations, or a Gelfand theory based course in harmonic analysis.