  {This paper presents the VIMOS VLT Deep Survey around the Chandra Deep Field
South (CDFS). We have measured 1599 new redshifts with VIMOS on the European
Observatory Very Large Telescope - UT3, in an area 21x21.6 arcmin^2, including
784 redshifts in the Hubble Space Telescope - Advanced Camera for Surveys GOODS
area. 30% of all objects with I_AB=24 have been observed independently of
magnitude, indicating that the sample is purely magnitude limited. We have
reached an unprecedented completeness level of 88% in terms of the ratio of
secure measurements vs. observed objects, while 95% of all objects have a
redshift measurement. A total of 1452 galaxies, 139 stars, 8 QSOs have a
redshift identification, 141 of these being unsecure measurements. The redshift
distribution down to I_AB=24 is peaked at a median redshift z=0.73, with a
significant high redshift tail extending up to ~4. Several high density peaks
in the distribution of galaxies are identified. In particular, the strong peak
at z=0.735 contains more than 130 galaxies in a velocity range +/-2000 km/s
distributed all across the transverse ~20 h^-1 Mpc of the survey. We are
releasing all redshifts to the community, along with the cross identification
with HST-ACS GOODS sources on the CENCOS database environment
http://cencosw.oamp.fr.
