The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), approved by the CERN Council in December 1994, will be the premiere research tool at the energy frontier of particle physics. It will provide proton-proton collisions with a centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV and an unprecedented luminosity of 10(34) cm(-2) s(-1). The most critical technologies of the LHC are the superconducting magnet system, with a dipole field above 8 Tesla, and the huge cryogenic system operating at below 2 K needed to achieve such high fields. A brief overview of the project is presented and the main technological challenges are discussed.