  Hadrons containing heavy quarks, i.e. charm or beauty, are unique probes of
the properties of the hot and dense QCD medium produced in heavy-ion
collisions. Due to their large masses, heavy quarks are produced at the initial
stage of the collision, almost exclusively via hard partonic scattering
processes. Therefore, they are expected to experience the full collision
history propagating through the QCD medium losing energy via elastic and
inelastic collisions with the medium constituents. The ALICE collaboration has
measured the production of open heavy-flavour hadrons via their hadronic and
semi-electronic decays at mid-rapidity and in the semi-muonic decay channel at
\mbox{forward rapidity} in pp, p--Pb and Pb--Pb collisions. In this talk the
latest results on the open \mbox{heavy-flavour nuclear modification factor,
$R_\mathrm{AA}$, and elliptic flow, $v_{2}$, are presented}.
