ALICE measurements of heavy-flavour production at the LHC

<!--HTML-->The measurement of open charm and beauty production in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC gives access to the mechanisms of heavy-quark transport and energy loss in hot and dense QCD matter. The ALICE apparatus allows us to measure heavy flavour particles over a wide acceptance, using hadronic and electronic final states at central rapidity and muonic final states at forward rapidity, in both cases with coverage down to low transverse momentum. These measurements, in pp collisions, besides constituting the reference for the heavy-ion studies, provide acceptance-wise unique information on heavy-quark production at LHC energies. After presenting results for pp collisions at centre-of-mass energies of 2.76 and 7 TeV, we focus on the observation of the suppression of heavy-flavour production in central Pb-Pb collisions and of the azimuthal anisotropy of charmed hadrons in semi-central collisions at 2.76 TeV.