This work focuses on the ideas to embed nuclear physics in the larger context of hadronic physics by stressing its widening overlap with particle, astroparticle and condensed matter physics and to emphasize the unity of the two facets of physics - the theoretical and the experimental ones. The reader will find modern conceptions on nuclear structure, how atomic nuclei are probed through the scattering of high energy electrons, and how they interact when accelerated at ultra-relativistic energies. The item connects to the quest for the quark-gluon plasma, perhaps the central theme of the contemporary hadronic physics.