The ALICE experiment at the LHC

ALICE, the dedicated heavy-ion experiment at the LHC, is at present being installed at CERN and will be ready to start data taking in a short time. This general-purpose experiment will be able to study all the physics topics already investigated in heavy-ion collisions at lower energies (RHIC and SPS) as well as novel ones, which are expected to become relevant and to play a role at LHC energies. The general features and the capabilities of the ALICE detector will be outlined in this paper and some selected physics topics will be discussed to illustrate the potential of the experiment in this unexplored energy regime.