A Lie group is said to be metrisable if it admits a Riemannian metric which is invariant under all translations of the group. It is shown that the study of such groups reduces to the study of what are called metrisable Lie algebras, and some necessary conditions for a Lie algebra to be metrisable are given. Various decomposition and existence theorems are also given, and it is shown that every metrisable algebra is the product of an abelian algebra and a number of non-decomposable reduced algebras. The number of independent metrics admitted by a metrisable algebra is examined, and it is shown that the metric is unique when and only when the complex extension of the algebra is simple.