CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) allows you to control the style and layout of HTML documents. There are three ways to apply CSS - inline styles within HTML tags, internal styles within <style> tags in the head section, or external styles in a separate .css file linked via <link> tags. CSS rules contain selectors that specify elements to style and declarations that define properties like color, font, size and layout. For example, the rule h1 {color: navy;} would make all <h1> text navy blue. External stylesheets are best for applying styles across many pages by changing one .css file.