SPICES (Spectro-Polarimetric Imaging and Characterization of Exoplanetary Systems) was proposed in 2010 for a a five-year M-class mission in the context of ESA Cosmic Vision. Its purpose is to image and characterize long-period extrasolar planets located at several AUs (0.5-10 AU) from nearby stars (<25 pc) with masses ranging from a few Jupiter masses down to Super-Earths (∼2 Earth radii, ∼10M⊕), possibly habitable. In addition, circumstellar disks as faint as a few times the zodiacal light in the Solar System can be studied. SPICES is based on a 1.5-m off-axis telescope and can perform spectro- polarimetric measurements in the visible (450-900 nm) at a spectral resolution of about 40. This paper summarizes the top science program and the choices made to conceive the instrument. The performance is illustrated for a few emblematic cases. 1. SCIENCE PROGRAM SPICES is an evolution of the former SEE-COAST proposal (11) and belongs to the category of so-called small coronagraphic telescopes derived from the Terrestrial Planet Finder concept (8). It is a direct imaging mission designed to achieve very high contrasts in order to characterize exoplanetary systems previously identified by other instruments/techniques (radial velocity, astrometry, direct imaging). This challenging goal clearly requires a specific instrumentation, which is not available on any other present or future facility and must be optimized for a very specific task. Typical star/planet brightness ratios in reflected light are in the range of 10 8 to 10 10 at less than 1 arcsec. SPICES combines several techniques for high contrast imaging in a single instrument designed to maximize the astrophysical return while reducing risks. A more precise description of the proposal can be found in (3) while detailed simulations are presented in (9). We here extract a few important results from these two reference papers. The primary objective of SPICES is to characterize the atmospheres and possibly surfaces of various types of planets: gaseous and iced giants as well as Super-Earths. For that purpose, SPICES combines direct imaging with spectro-polarimetry in the visible (450-900nm) and measures the total flux F and the linearly polarized fluxes Q and U, all as functions of the wavelength , for every pixel in an image.