The ALICE Collaboration has built a dedicated heavy-ion detector to exploit the unique physics potential of nucleus-nucleus interactions at LHC energies. Our aim is to study the physics of strongly interacting matter at extreme energy densities, where the formation of a new phase of matter, the quark-gluon plasma, is expected. The existence of such a phase and its properties are key issues in QCD for the understanding of confinement and of chiral-symmetry restoration. For this purpose, we are carrying out a comprehensive study of the hadrons, electrons, muons and photons produced in the collision of heavy nuclei. Alice is also studying proton-proton collisions both as a comparison with lead-lead collisions and in physics areas where Alice is competitive with other LHC experiments.