Context. The Perseus cluster is one of the most massive nearby galaxy clusters and is fascinating in various respects. Though the galaxies in the central cluster region have been intensively investigated, an analysis of the galaxy population in a larger field is still outstanding. Aims. This paper investigates the galaxies that are brighter than B ≈ 20 within a field corresponding to the Abell radius of the Perseus cluster. Our first aim is to compile a new catalogue in a wide field around the centre of the Perseus cluster. The second aim of this study is to employ this catalogue for a systematic study of the cluster galaxy population with an emphasis on morphology and activity. Methods. We selected the galaxies in a 10 square degrees field of the Perseus cluster on Schmidt CCD images in B and Hα in combination with SDSS images. Morphological information was obtained both from the “eyeball” inspection and the surface brightness profile analysis. We obtained low-resolution spectra for 82 galaxies and exploited the spectra archive of SDSS and redshift data from the literature. Results. We present a catalogue of 1294 galaxies with morphological information for 90% of the galaxies and spectroscopic redshifts for 24% of them. We selected a heterogeneous sample of 313 spectroscopically confirmed cluster members and two different magnitude-limited samples with incomplete redshift data. These galaxy samples were used to derive such properties as the projected radial velocity dispersion profile, projected radial density profile, galaxy luminosity function, supermassive black hole mass function, total stellar mass, virial mass, and virial radius, to search for indications of substructure, to select active galaxies, and to study the relation between morphology, activity, density, and position. In addition, we present brief individual descriptions of 18 cluster galaxies with conspicuous morphological peculiarities.