The physics programme of the ALICE experiment at the LHC

ALICE is the dedicated heavy-ion experiment designed to exploit the unique physics potential of nucleus-nucleus interactions at the LHC energies. ALICE will also study proton-proton and proton-nucleus collisions, which will provide reference data for the nucleus-nucleus collisions. In addition the pp data will allow for a number of genuine pp physics studies, especially in the low pt domain. In this paper we present the ALICE reach for a representative sample of measured observables, and we discuss how they test the properties of the matter created in heavy-ion collisions.