page_title: Administrative divisions of Portugal
section_title: Municipalities
hierarchical_section_title: Administrative divisions of Portugal / Subdivisions / Municipalities
caption_attribution_description: Coimbra, Portugal.
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: Apart from the national territory, that includes mainland Portugal and the two archipelagos, the municipalities (municípios, colloquially known as concelhos) have been the most constant territorial subdivision in the past 900 years.  While a term for municipality (concelho) appeared in the 13th century, to "express a community constituted in a territory of varying extensions, whose residents – the neighbours of the municipality – are granted major or minor administrative autonomy", the territorial division predates its use. Preceding the nation's independence, the oldest of the larger municipalities still in existence Coimbra and Santarém were founded in 1085 e 1095, respectively. São João da Pesqueira (in the district of Viseu) is the oldest Portuguese municipality, founded in 1055.
  Since the creation of a democratic local administration, in 1976, the Portuguese municipalities have been ruled by a system composed by an executive body (the municipal chamber) and a deliberative body (the municipal assembly). The municipal chamber (câmara municipal) is the executive body, and is composed of a president of the municipality and a number of councillors whose number depends on the municipality's population. The municipal assembly (assembleia municipal) is composed of the presidents of all the civil parishes plus a number of directly elected representatives that has to be at least equal to the number of civil parish presidents plus one, and which otherwise depends on the municipal population.
  There are 308 municipalities in Portugal. They are usually named for their biggest city, or at least, their historically most important city or town. However, the municipality is usually much larger than the city or town after which it is named. The largest in area is Odemira with 1720.60 km², the smallest is São João da Madeira with an area of 7.94 km².
  Nearly all municipalities are subdivided into civil parishes. Barcelos is the municipality with the largest number of civil parishes (61). There are six municipalities that have only one civil parish: São João da Madeira, Alpiarça, Barrancos, Castanheira de Pera, Porto Santo (Madeira) and São Brás de Alportel. The municipality of Corvo (comprising the Corvo Island in the Azores) is the only Portuguese municipality without a civil parish.
caption: View of Coimbra, one of the two oldest municipalities in Portugal.
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