The city is one of Romania's Danube river ports, as well as an important border crossing point with Bulgaria.
Due to its location on the Pan-European Danube Corridor VII and the Pan-European Corridor IV, the southern wing connecting Central and Middle East, Calafatul will benefit from important infrastructure investments.
The city of Calafat has settled and developed over time in an excellent natural geographical environment, due to the presence of the Danubian old waters, on whose left bank the settlement is located, having an area of ​​103.59 km2.
Calafatul, the town of roses, chestnuts and secular oaks, golden holdings and modern industry, as well as the towering historical monuments, is located in the south-western extremity of Dolj County, on the left bank of the Danube, about 90 km from Craiova, in the Ciuperceni Plain, a subunit of the Băileştilor Plain, where the river begins to deepen its second meander at 43 °, 58 ° and 14 ° north latitude and 22 °, 56 ° and 40 ° east longitude. At present Calafatul includes in its administrative structure the villages of Ciupercenii Vechi, Basarabi and Golenti.
South and southwest, across the Danube, is Bulgaria. To the southeast, at a distance of 14 km, there is the Poiana Mare commune, one of the largest rural settlements in the country, with which it communicates both by the Calafat-Golenti railway and by the modern 55A asphalt road. To the south and south-east, the city is bordered by the localities of Smârdan and Ciupercenii Noi, both established at the end of the last century and which currently form a single commune - Ciupercenii Noi.
From a physical and geographic point of view, the city is located in a region of the plain, namely in the Romanian Plain, namely at the South-West extremity of the Oltenia Plain, more precisely in the Plain of Băileştilor. The Romanian Plain (Lower Danube), located on the left side of the Danube, is bordered to the north by the Getic Piedmont, Subcarpathians and the Plateau of Moldavia.
The overall character of the relief is given by the predominance of the flat forms with an altitude of less than 200 m, but within the plain one can distinguish at least three distinct aspects encountered in sub-units oriented in the east-west direction: the piemontal plain, and the loessica tabular field. The Romanian Plain is divided into two large subdivisions: the Eastern Romanian Plain and the Western Romanian Plain, separated by a line that roughly corresponds to the course of the Argeş River. Subunit of the Oltenia Plain, the Baileşti Plain stretches between the Drincea and Jiu Valleys, crossed by Balasan and Desnăţui, consisting of the Danube terraces, except for the Segarce Field, a small northeast sector, where all eight its terraces, and the valley as a whole reaches the maximum width of 40 km.
The local legend pleads for the idea that the ancient settlement of Calafat was originally a small colony of fishermen. According to a legend, in the 11th century, more precisely in the years 1040-1042, a certain Mihail Calafat, a craftsman in the art of marrying, found in these lands a suitable settlement for the execution of his craft, would set up, on the Danube, a a workshop for the repair and smashing of ships, which made the Byzantine sailors, and then the Genoese, attracted by his skill, to bring their vessels for repair. According to the same legend, the unique place where the covenant was carried out was at the wharf near this settlement, which later became Calafat.