Absorption and accretion properties of local Active Galactic Nuclei

Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) are powered by accretion onto supermassive black holes and, besides being among the most luminous sources of radiation in the Universe, are also widely believed to play an important role in the evolution of their host galaxies.
X-ray emission is an ubiquitous property of AGN and, being produced within a few gravitational radii from the supermassive black hole, can provide fundamental information about the structure and geometry of the circumnuclear material, as well as on the characteristics of the accretion flow. In my talk I will present recent studies of the obscuration and accretion properties of local AGN in the X-ray band, focussing on the results obtained from the Swift/BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey.