The coordination geometry of transition metal ions cr3+, ~n~+,~e'+,Fe~+,N i~+ and cu2+ in acqueous solution has been studied by x-ray absorption near edge structure spectroscopy. The spectra have been analyzed in terms of succesive orders of multiple scattering contributions. The effect of the absorbing central atom, oxydation state, interatomic distance of the various metal ions and the particular site structure of cu2+ are discussed. The coordination of transition metal ions in solution has been studied by several methods which probe the pair correlation fun~tion.(~~~)~owever, direct information on the site geometry can only be obtained by the determination of higher orders correlation functions. It has been recently demonstrated that x-ray absorption absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy is a direct probe of these ~atters(~*~) and the three atom correlation function has been extracted experimentally for the (cro412' and (Mn04)- ions in solution.(8) We report here the metal ion K-edge spectra of cr3+,~n2+,Fe3+, Ni2+ and cu2+ ions in solution with high signal to noise ratio using synchrotron radiation. The data analysis of the XANES spectra for these ions is simplified by the structural disorder of further shells of neighbours which reduces the size of the effective absorbing cluster to the metal ion and the first coordination shell. The multiple scattering data analysis shows that octahedral geometry of water molecules around the central atom is present in all the ions studied. The effect of the ion valence state on the spectra is described in terms of different electronic configuration used to construct the final state potential and by the different metal-ligand interatomic distances. In the case of cu2+ regular octahedral geometry was found and the tetragonal Jahn Teller distortion expected for this ion was not observed. A careful analysis of the EXAFS and XANES spectra supports the conclusion that either the static distortion is less than 0.3 or a dynamical Jahn Teller distortion is present in this ion.