  The Planck Catalogue of Compact Sources (PCCS) is the catalogue of sources
detected in the first 15 months of Planck operations, the "nominal" mission. It
consists of nine single-frequency catalogues of compact sources, both Galactic
and extragalactic, detected over the entire sky. The PCCS covers the frequency
range 30--857\,GHz with higher sensitivity (it is 90% complete at 180 mJy in
the best channel) and better angular resolution (from ~33' to ~5') than
previous all-sky surveys in this frequency band. By construction its
reliability is >80% and more than 65% of the sources have been detected at
least in two contiguous Planck channels. In this paper we present the
construction and validation of the PCCS, its contents and its statistical
characterization.
