Known nationally as the "Capital of Furniture", Paços de Ferreira is economically standing out through a dynamic industrial activity that has caused the municipality's demographic levels to grow. With a diversified offer in particular products and dimensions of exploration, the furniture industry has come to assert itself for the quality and capacity of satisfying orders and for an aggressive marketing strategy exemplified by the creation of furniture exhibition spaces and a great annual Fair.
From a traditional industry, the furniture of Paços de Ferreira has evolved into a modern competitive activity, not forgetting the concern with innovation, and to prove it are the successive design competitions and the appeal to such well-known names as the architect Siza Vieira's.
But if furniture is currently the trade image of Paços de Ferreira, we must also consider the importance of the textile industry, a significant local production.
If Paços de Ferreira is nowadays quoted for its modernity and economic dynamism, it preserves its historical parchments, foundations to an undeniable cultural identity. And some cultural structures, as the Municipal Museum, the Museum of the Fortified Village of Sanfins and the Fortified Village itself, announce the municipality's patrimonial values way beyond its borders.
It is, as a matter of fact, in the fortified culture that Paços de Ferreira, through Sanfins, holds a predominant national place. Thanks to the existence of a unique archaeological park and to the careful and persistent study of several archaeologists throughout the 20th century, Sanfins became the biggest landmark in the peninsular northwestern fortified culture.
Integrated in the Lands of Sousa, during the High Middle Age, the current territory of Paços de Ferreira had, for centuries, its biggest influence in the Monastery of Ferreira.
Set in a transition area, connected simultaneously to the interior and the coast, with the identity of the Douro exerting a strong influence, the current territory of Paços de Ferreira grew in the most diversified civil, legal and religious units for centuries. The municipalities of Refojos de Riba d'Ave and Aguiar de Sousa had congregated the larger part of the parishes currently composing the municipality, with a strong legal bond to the judicial district of Porto and the division between the bishop headquarters of Braga and Porto.
The Municipality, as we know it today, was defined in the 19th century, following the liberal administrative reform that reorganized the country, extinguishing about 700 cities and originating the administrative map that conducts them to this day. It is through the Decree of November 6th 1836, signed by queen Maria II, that the constitution of the new municipalities is defined, and in that extensive listing the municipality of Paços de Ferreira is stated.
The sprouting of the new municipality appears in a time when the its population's main activity was agriculture, complemented by some crafts such as basketry, cooperage, weaving, milling, shoe-making, tinkering and firework making.
Along the 19th century, the so-called "Brazilian returnees" play an extremely important role in Paços de Ferreira for the capital they introduce in the local economy and for the politic influence they assume in the new municipality.
Step by step, thanks to the nearby market of Porto and its easy access, the small crafts grow and proliferate, slowly turning into factories. Working the wood is, in Paços de Ferreira, an activity stemming from this incipient industrial activity of the late 19th century. Already in 1920, in Freamunde, there was an important School Furniture Factory, advertising an industrial embryo that the second half of the 20th century came to confirm.
After the April Revolution and the imposition of the Local Power, the municipality of Paços de Ferreira managed to take advantage of the conditions at its disposal, creating the essential modern infrastructures to the welfare of the population.
Paços de Ferreira has its holiday on the 6th of November, celebrating a day in 1836 when queen Maria II signed the decree to the municipality of Paços de Ferreira. In the year of 1993, May 20th to be precise, the Assembly of the Republic approved by a majority the promotion of Paços de Ferreira from village to City.