The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) project of CERN

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was approved by CERN's Council in December 1994 and a conceptual accelerator design published in October 1995. The LHC will provide proton-proton collisions of 7 TeV + 7 TeV with a luminosity of up to 10$^{34}$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$, at two collision points and lead-ion collisions with a total centre of mass energy of 1148 TeV and a luminosity up to 10$^{27}$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$. In this paper the status of the collider project will be described with emphasis on the latest developments. The experimental programme of the LHC is also in the process of being defined and is expected to include a dedicated heavy-ion detector, ALICE, and a specialised B-physics spectrometer, LHCb, as well as the already approved, high luminosity, general purpose detectors, ATLAS and CMS. A description of the experimental areas foreseen for these experiments will be given.