We address the topic of the intra-night optical variability of the BL Lac object S5 0716+714. To this purpose a long-term observational campaign was carried out, from 1996 to 2003, which allowed the collection of a very large data set, containing 10675 photometric measurements obtained in 102 nights. The source brightness varied in a range of about 2mag, although the majority of the observations were performed when it was in the range 13.0