Stephen Hawking predicted in 1974 that black holes are not black as a consequence of quantum physics, but send out thermal radiation. Hawking's prediction is consistent with Jacob Bekenstein's ideas on black-hole thermodynamics and has been one of the intellectually most influential results of theoretical physics: it gives a tantalising view into a possible connection between general relativity, quantum physics and thermodynamics. Unfortunately, the thermal radiation of realistic black holes is much too feeble to be observable in astrophysics, and so Hawking radiation seemed destined to remain theory, were it not for recent ideas and experimental progress on analogues of the event horizon. These are not real black holes, but analogues that behave similar to the event horizon. Such analogues have been inspired by William Unruh in 1981, but only recently they entered a stage where direct experimental observations are possible. In my opinion, the most promising analogues of the event horizon are optical ones, because the quantum features of light are the easiest to detect. In this lecture I will discuss our results on the way towards optical demonstrations of analogues of the event horizon and their quantum physics.