SUMMARY
Urban morphology is an interdisciplinary research field widely disseminated, even though the fundamental tools of a morphological analysis do not seem to have been properly systematized and spread throughout national academic publishing arena. Thus, this paper aims to facilitate the understanding of certain morphological concepts and their possibilities of application, beyond their original background in Geography, and through the perspective of Architecture and Urbanism. Therefore, some of the main instruments for studying urban forms will be stated, namely the basic elements of the city form and the concepts of building fabric, urban fringe belts, morphological region and townscape. Working as methodological tools, these concepts allow the understanding and characterization of the urban conformation, as well as its evolution and its transformations.