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This is a list of cities in Portugal. In Portugal, a city (Portuguese: cidade) is a honorific term given to locations that meet several criteria, such as having a minimum number of inhabitants, good infrastructures, like schools, medical care, cultural and sports facilities, or have a major historical importance. The country's demographic expansion of the 1980's prompted the elevation of several towns to city status and, currently, 151 locations in Portugal are considered a city.

In Portugal, the city is not an administrative division, therefore, a city generally does not necessarily correspond to a municipality, with the exception of the entirely urban municipalities, such as Lisbon, Porto or Funchal. Some municipalities may even contain more than one city and, on the other hand, the least populated municipalities contain no cities. Equally, a city does not necessarily correspond to a parish, the lowest level administrative division in Portugal and several cities are composed by more than one parish, however, smaller cities may be composed of just one parish. The seat, i.e., the municipal offices and services of a municipality, are usually located in its most important city or town.

A particular case is Sintra, which despite being currently one of the larger urban areas of the country, and containing two cities in its municipality, holds still the rank of vila, by wish of its elected officials.

Until 1910, a location was proclaimed city by royal charter, which happened 25 times to current Portuguese cities (royal charters were also granted to cities of the Portuguese Empire, e.g. São Paulo in 1711). During the Portuguese First Republic, the process was transferred to the Parliament, that elevated three towns to the category of city. The dictatorial Estado Novo regime proclaimed seven cities in the Portuguese mainland (as well as some more in the colonies), this time by government decree. After the Carnation revolution, proclamation of cities returned to Parliament and nowadays Portugal has 151 cities - one of the consequences being that the title no longer holds the prestige it once had.

Eight locations have been always considered cities since Portugal became an independent kingdom (de facto 1143): Braga, Coimbra, Lamego, Porto and Viseu, as well as Évora, Lisbon and Silves, which were annexed at a later date.

List

Notes

1. ^ Although the cities list doesn't indicate the cities' population, it indicates the parishes that compose them, therefore, this numbers are the sum of the population of those parishes. The population data was taken from the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities and is from 2004.

References

1. Cidades Portuguesas. Instituto Nacional de Estatística. Retrieved on 2006-07-08.
2. Municípios Portugueses. Associação Nacional de Municípios Portugueses. Retrieved on 2006-03-27.

See also

• Subdivisions of Portugal
• List of towns in Portugal
• List of municipalities of Portugal
• List of parishes of Portugal

External links

• National Association of Portuguese Municipalities