  Heavy quarks, i.e. charm and beauty, are produced on a shorter time scale
with respect to the strongly-interacting matter produced in high-energy
heavy-ion collisions. Therefore, they are unique probes to study the mechanisms
of parton energy loss, hadronisation and thermalization in the hot and dense
state of matter. The nuclear modification factor ($R_{\rm AA}$) and the
elliptic flow ($v_{2}$) are two of the main experimental observables that allow
us to investigate the interaction strength of heavy quarks with the medium. The
most recent results on heavy-flavour production and elliptic flow measured by
the ALICE collaboration in Pb--Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_\mathrm{NN}}$ = 2.76
TeV will be discussed.
