  The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where lead nuclei will collide at the
unprecedented c.m.s. energy of 5.5 TeV per nucleon-nucleon pair, will offer new
and unique opportunities for the study of the properties of strongly
interacting matter at high energy density over extended volumes. We will
briefly explain why heavy-flavour particles are well-suited tools for such a
study and we will describe how the ALICE experiment is preparing to make use of
these tools.
