  This paper describes the Third Public Data Release (DR3) of the Calar Alto
Legacy Integral Field Area (CALIFA) survey. Science-grade quality data for 667
galaxies are made public, including the 200 galaxies of the Second Public Data
Release (DR2). Data were obtained with the integral-field spectrograph
PMAS/PPak mounted on the 3.5m telescope at the Calar Alto Observatory. Three
different spectral setups are available, i) a low-resolution V500 setup
covering the wavelength range 3749-7500 AA (4240-7140 AA unvignetted) with a
spectral resolution of 6.0 AA (FWHM), for 646 galaxies, ii) a medium-resolution
V1200 setup covering the wavelength range 3650-4840 AA (3650-4620 AA
unvignetted) with a spectral resolution of 2.3 AA (FWHM), for 484 galaxies, and
iii) the combination of the cubes from both setups (called COMBO), with a
spectral resolution of 6.0 AA and a wavelength range between 3700-7500 AA
(3700-7140 AA unvignetted), for 446 galaxies. The Main Sample, selected and
observed according to the CALIFA survey strategy covers a redshift range
between 0.005 and 0.03, spans the color-magnitude diagram and probes a wide
range of stellar mass, ionization conditions, and morphological types. The
Extension Sample covers several types of galaxies that are rare in the overall
galaxy population and therefore not numerous or absent in the CALIFA Main
Sample. All the cubes in the data release were processed using the latest
pipeline, which includes improved versions of the calibration frames and an
even further improved im- age reconstruction quality. In total, the third data
release contains 1576 datacubes, including ~1.5 million independent spectra. It
is available at http://califa.caha.es/DR3.
