The construction and characteristics of the PIBETA spectrometer are described. This spectrometer is designed to implement a program of precise measurement of pion β decay π + π 0 + e + + ν e at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland). A spherical calorimeter, consisting of 240 crystals of pure CsI scintillator and embracing a solid angle of ~3 π , is the main detector of the setup. In addition, the spectrometer is composed of an active collimator (which also acts as a beam degrader), a segmented active plastic target, two multiwire cylindrical proportional chambers, a 20-element cylindrical plastic hodoscope, and veto counters of cosmic muons. z ˆ c ˆ cś ˆ c´