In this paper we consider the classes of all continuous $\mathcal {L}$-(pre-)structures for a continuous first-order signature $\mathcal {L}$. We characterize the moduli of continuity for which the classes of finite, countable, or all continuous $\mathcal {L}$-(pre-)structures have the amalgamation property. We also characterize when Urysohn continuous $\mathcal {L}$-(pre)-structures exist, establish that certain classes of finite continuous $\mathcal {L}$-structures are countable Fraïssé classes, prove the coherent EPPA for these classes of finite continuous $\mathcal {L}$-structures, and show that actions by automorphisms on finite $\mathcal {L}$-structures also form a Fraïssé class. As consequences, we have that the automorphism group of the Urysohn continuous $\mathcal {L}$-structure is a universal Polish group and that Hall’s universal locally finite group is contained in the automorphism group of the Urysohn continuous $\mathcal {L}$-structure as a dense subgroup.

If ${\mathfrak {F}}$ is a type-definable family of commensurable subsets, subgroups or subvector spaces in a metric structure, then there is an invariant subset, subgroup or subvector space commensurable with ${\mathfrak {F}}$. This in particular applies to type-definable or hyper-definable objects in a classical first-order structure.

Answering a question of Cifú Lopes, we give a syntactic characterization of those continuous sentences that are preserved under reduced products of metric structures. In fact, we settle this question in the wider context of general structures as introduced by the second author.

Using the category of metric spaces as a template, we develop a metric analogue of the categorical semantics of classical/intuitionistic logic, and show that the natural notion of predicate in this “continuous semantics” is equivalent to the a priori separate notion of predicate in continuous logic, a logic which is independently well-studied by model theorists and which finds various applications. We show this equivalence by exhibiting the real interval $[0,1]$ in the category of metric spaces as a “continuous subobject classifier” giving a correspondence not only between the two notions of predicate, but also between the natural notion of quantification in the continuous semantics and the existing notion of quantification in continuous logic.

Along the way, we formulate what it means for a given category to behave like the category of metric spaces, and afterwards show that any such category supports the aforementioned continuous semantics. As an application, we show that categories of presheaves of metric spaces are examples of such, and in fact even possess continuous subobject classifiers.

We extend Ahlbrandt and Ziegler’s reconstruction results ([1]) to the metric setting: we show that separably categorical structures are determined, up to bi-interpretability, by their automorphism groups.

We develop several aspects of local and global stability in continuous first order logic. In particular, we study type-definable groups and genericity.

We prove that in a continuous ℵ0-stable theory every type-definable group is definable. The two main ingredients in the proof are:

(i) Results concerning Morley ranks (i.e., Cantor-Bendixson ranks) from [Ben08], allowing us to prove the theorem in case the metric is invariant under the group action; and

(ii) Results concerning the existence of translation-invariant definable metrics on type-definable groups and the extension of partial definable metrics to total ones.