page_title: Administrative divisions of Portugal
section_title: Metropolitan areas
hierarchical_section_title: Administrative divisions of Portugal / Subdivisions / Administrative regions / Metropolitan areas
caption_attribution_description: Română: Vista aérea parcial do centro da cidade
context_page_description: Administratively, Portugal is de jure unitary and decentralized state. Nonetheless, operationally, it is highly centralized system with administrative divisions organized into three tiers. The State is organized under the principles of subsidiarity, local government autonomy, and democratic decentralization of the public service.
  The government structure is based on the 1976 Constitution, adopted after the 1974 Carnation Revolution. In addition to defining the status of the autonomous regions Azores and Madeira, the Constitution specifically identifies the three tiers of government: civil parishes, municipalities and administrative regions.
  In addition, the Portuguese territory was redefined during European integration, under a system of statistical regions and subregions known as Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics. These NUTS definitions, used for collecting statistical information, follow many of the country's border definitions. Although utilized by the Portuguese government, they do not have a legal status in law.
  The current administrative divisions of Portugal, are the 18 Districts and the 2 Autonomous Regions.
context_section_description: The Metropolitan Areas are territorial units formed by grouping municipalities, in order to economize on municipal investments and services. As of 2014, there are two metropolitan areas that correspond to Level III NUTS regions:
  The Lisbon metropolitan area (Área Metropolitana de Lisboa), consisting of 18 municipalities with a total population (2011 census) of 2,821,876
  The Porto metropolitan area (Área Metropolitana do Porto), consisting of 17 municipalities with a total population (2011 census) of 1,759,524
caption: São João da Madeira, one of the five municipalities with only one civil parish, and the smallest municipality in Portugal in area.
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