CakePHP has several features that make it a great choice as a framework for developing applications swiftly and with the least amount of hassle. Here are a few in no particular order:
Active, friendly community
Flexible Licensing
Compatibility with PHP4 and PHP5
Integrated CRUD for database interaction and simplified queries
Application Scaffolding
Model View Controller (MVC) Architecture
Request dispatcher with good looking, custom URLs
Built-in Validation
Fast and flexible templating (PHP syntax, with helpers)
View Helpers for AJAX, Javascript, HTML Forms and more
Security, Session, and Request Handling Components
Flexible access control lists
Data Sanitization
Flexible View Caching
Works from any web site subdirectory, with little to no Apache configuration involved