The "VIMOS Public Extragalactic Redshift Survey" (VIPERS) is an ESO Large Program started at the end of 2008 to map in detail the spatial distribution of normal galaxies over an unprecedented volume of the z~1 Universe. VIPERS will reach this goal using VIMOS at the VLT to measure 100,000 redshifts for galaxies with red magnitude I(AB) brighter than 22.5 over an area of 24 square degrees. At this redshift, VIPERS fills a unique niche in galaxy surveys, optimizing the combination of 5-band accurate photometry from the CFHTLS with the multiplexing capability of VIMOS. A robust color-color pre-selection allows VIPERS to focus its measurements on the 0.5 < z < 1.2 redshift range, yielding an optimal combination of large volume (5 x 10⁷ h^-3 Mpc³) and high effective spectroscopic sampling (> 50%). With these figures, the VIPERS data sets will be the z~1 equivalent of current state-of-the-art "local" surveys as the 2dFGRS, allowing us to compare measurements at these two different epochs on equal statistical footing.

VIPERS scientific investigations will focus on measurements of large-scale structure and cosmological parameters at an epoch when the Universe was about half its current age. At the same time, the survey will be able to explore the ensemble properties of luminous galaxies, groups, clusters and AGNs with unprecedented statistical accuracy at these redshifts.