The Municipality de Paços de Ferreira has an area of 71,6 km2. It belongs to the district and diocese of Porto, set in the region of the Sousa Valley about 25 km from the city of Porto, and is administratively distributed through 16 parishes.
It faces the municipality of Santo Tirso in the north and west, Valongo and Paredes in the south and Lousada in the east. Thus, its physical space and privileged geographic location, allied to the capacity, valour and merit of its people, allowed to consolidate it as the biggest diffusing centre for the furniture industry ("Capital of Furniture") leaving the rural and agricultural industries to a second spot.
The Municipality of Paços de Ferreira is set in a plateau of average altitude known as Chã de Ferreira, admired for its natural beauties, the amenity of the environment, owning an humanized arrangement in its landscape of dispersed houses among rural spaces and urban and industrial areas.
From the top of the Fortified Village de Sanfins, our ancestors descended to clear the lands on the hillside, when the Romans so urged them in the context of ordering the territory in the most suitable fashion.

Close to Santo Tirso and the Lands of Maia, the Leça River flows between curves and slopes of green, following its way to the sea in Leixões.
From this side flow, as sand escaping from a closed hand, small streams draining fertile farmed lands, some of them invaded by pine trees and industries or just farm houses and common households. Among these streams, in Raimonda, is one going by the name of Ferreira. It passes discretely west of the city of Paços de Ferreira and moves forward among yards and branches of vine, towards Valongo and Gondomar, until it meets the Sousa River. It covers a total of about 30 km. A small distance, but enough to leave memories of mills, bridges, sawmills, dams and even fishing. To Ferreira we add the rivers Eiriz and Carvalhosa.
All these lands were already farmed and intensely populated in the Middle Age, mainly in those small water course valley areas. All of them are in an altitude varying between 300 and 400 meters.
In the higher spots the woods and small forests supporting the population are preserved. Halfway between the lands of the valley and these small forests, villages organized themselves using the geographic potential to the maximum, i.e., the land and the forest. Such process had its boost in the Middle Age, when, contrary to what it seems, there was a natural balance between human activities and what the nature represented in each place.

Paços de Ferreira designates the Municipality and one of its parishes, where the Autarchy administration is set. 15 other parishes compose it: Arreigada, Carvalhosa, Codessos, Eiriz, Ferreira, Figueiró, Frazão, Freamunde, Lamoso, Meixomil, Modelos, Penamaior, Raimonda, Sanfins de Ferreira.

The physical space and the privileged geographic location of the Municipality, allied to the capacity, valour and merit of its people, consolidated it as the biggest furniture industry diffusing centre, leaving behind the rural and agricultural industry. One must, however, describe the way the furniture industry was set. There was, in fact, a firm step from agriculture to industrialization, not implying nevertheless the tacit elimination of the former.

In the field of furniture, Paços de Ferreira is distinguished for the know-how. The meeting between the most traditional methodology and the more technologically advanced one, between the artist or master carpenter and the technician, between the planer or the jackplane and the machine, make the Municipality a producer flexible to market fluctuations, where the variety in the offer is compatible with the variety in the search. The concentration of a high number of furniture production and commercialization units, as well as the quality in wood and design allowed for this municipality to be called national and internationally the "CAPITAL OF FURNITURE".