diff --git a/README b/README
index e69de29..9db8788 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+* PlantUMLServlet description 
+*****************************
+PlantUMLServlet is a PlantUML extension to generate images on-the-fly. 
+To know more about PlantUML, please visit http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/ 
+
+* How to build the project
+**************************
+To build the project you need to install the following components :
+- java jdk 1.6.0 or above
+- apache tomcat 6.0 or above
+- apache ant 1.7 or above 
+
+If the tomcat home directory is not /tomcat, you have to create at
+the root of the project a text file named user.property and 
+containing the following line:
+tomcat-home=<your tomcat home dir>  
+
+For example, on a Windows environment, your user.property file can be:
+tomcat-home=C:/tools/Tomcat6.0 
+
+To build the war, just run "ant" at the root directory of the project.