The VVDS: a journey through space and time

The VIMOS-VLT Deep Survey started in 2002 with the aim of replicating at high redshift large local surveys like 2dF and SDSS. It is the only survey of this kind using a purely apparent magnitude selection allowing us to avoid the intrinsic biases existing in popular high redshift color based surveys. In the last few years, the deep part of VVDS (0.55 deg² down to I[ab]=24) has already produced a series of milestone results on the evolution of galaxies and large-scale structure up to z∼4. The complementary VVDS-Wide survey (10 deg² down to I[ab]=22.5 ) aims at reconstructing a more complete 3D map of the cosmic web at z∼1 and trace large scale structure up to transverse comoving scales of 100 Mpc h^-1. In this presentation, I will give a brief description of the VVDS-Wide survey for which we have just completed the first chunk of ∼4 deg². I will then present the most recent results from both VVDS-Deep and Wide samples, focusing on large scale structure properties, the clustering of z∼1 galaxies as a function of luminosity stellar mass, the evolution of the luminosity function with environmental density. Finally, I will mention the unique VVDS results on the number density of galaxies at z>3.