Footprint of the VIPERS observations within the W1 (top) and W4 (bottom) fields, as reconstructed from the final galaxy sample. The VIMOS pointings and quadrants are indicated by black rectangles. Galaxies are colour coded according to their value of the target sampling rate (TSR: see Sect. 4), which can be considered as a proxy for the inverse of the projected galaxy density field. Empty rectangles correspond to failed quadrants, for which the spectroscopic mask insertion failed or was incorrect, leading to no collection of data.