Over the past 15 years a “standard” model of cosmology has been established. Apparently, we live in a low-density Universe with flat geometry, currently dominated by a cosmological constant driving a phase of accelerated expansion.  Galaxy redshift surveys are one of the key experimental pillars that contributed to building this overall picture. Even larger surveys are ongoing or planned, with the goal of understanding the nature of cosmic acceleration, together with the origin of galaxies.

In my talk I will look into some of the most recent advances in studying large-scale structure and galaxies at z~1, focusing on the results from the VIPERS project at the ESO VLT.  VIPERS has recently completed its final sample of 90,000 redshifts, producing highly-sampled maps of the general galaxy population at 0.5<z<1.2. Coupled to multi-band photometry, VIPERS is providing us not only with independent cosmological measurements when the Universe was about half its current age (as e.g. the power spectrum of fluctuations and the growth rate of structure through Redshift Space Distortions), but also with a representative view of the properties of galaxies within their large-scale environment at these epochs.