The city of Penafiel occupies an area of 212,2 km2 of the river convergence formed by the Douro, Tâmega and Sousa, linking the coast to the interior.

With 38 parishes and more than 72.000 inhabitants (338,4 inhabitants/km2), Penafiel integrates the Urban Community of the Sousa Valley, NUT III Tâmega, in a landscape of deep fertile lands, where everything is green, more intense in the irrigated meadow and field areas and in the new vineyards, more extinguished in the pine and eucalyptus forest areas. The populating process has revealed itself continuous, dense but spread, with many small industry units and agricultural commerce along with new residences, fields kept through part-time work, a pulse also felt in the pendular migration's intensity, in the traffic and occupation along the roads.
The extraction industry, civil construction and commerce and services use a great number of workers, as well as the companies set in modern industrial areas, confirming the tertiary vocation of the city and, above all, of its urban center, the only district city asides from Porto for two centuries.