LHCb status and early physics prospects

LHCb is a dedicated detector for b and c physics at the LHC. I will present a concise review of the detector design and expected performance together with some very early physics results and prospects. An integrated luminosity of $\sim 0.2~\rm{fb}^{-1}$, which should be collected in 2010, will already allow LHCb to perform a number of very significant mesurements with the potential of revealing New Physics effects, such as the search of the decay $\rm B^0_s \rightarrow \mu^+ \mu^-$\xspace beyond the limit set by CDF and D0.