REVIEWS OF HOTEL EXECUTIVE CLUB LOUNGES, KIDS CLUBS AND MORE.
If there's one thing that made our stay at the Corpo Santo Lisbon Historical Hotel truly unforgettable, it wasn't just the room, the welcome treats, or the football shirts waiting for our children on the beds. It was the Sense Spa. We loved it so much as a family that we ended up going back every single day of our trip, sometimes twice, and by the end of the stay, we genuinely didn't want to leave. What started as a quick look on our first afternoon turned into the highlight of the entire holiday, and if you'd told us before we arrived that a hotel spa would end up being the thing our children talked about most, we'd never have believed you.
Most spas and saunas we've come across on our travels are strictly adults-only, and understandably so. But the Sense Spa at Corpo Santo does things differently: children are welcome to use every single feature, provided a parent is there with them. As a family with two young children, this was such a refreshing change. So many hotel spas we've visited before have left the kids stuck outside a locked door while the grown-ups relax, peering in through the glass while we tried to enjoy five minutes of peace, feeling a bit guilty the whole time. Here, there was none of that. The whole family got to enjoy the experience together, properly together, moving from room to room as a unit, and it made the whole thing feel so much more special than a typical spa visit.
The spa is tucked away as a peaceful retreat within the hotel, calm and softly lit, with the same warm, soothing colour palette that runs through the rest of the property. It's open daily from morning through to late evening, giving plenty of time to fit in a visit whether you're heading out for the day or winding down after one. Because it's included as part of the stay, there was no faff booking slots, filling out forms or paying extra on top – we simply turned up whenever we fancied it, towels in hand, which is exactly what we did, daily, without fail. Some days it was a quick half hour before dinner, other days we ended up staying for the best part of two hours, moving lazily from the jacuzzi to the sauna and back again.
This is where our children spent most of their time, and it's easy to see why. The warm bubbling water was an instant hit the moment they dipped a toe in, and they'd happily have stayed in there for hours if we'd let them. There's something about a jacuzzi that just turns children instantly playful, and ours were no exception, giggling away, chasing bubbles, and finding every jet in the pool to sit against. It was lovely to sit back in the warm water as a family, chatting away about our day, going over everything we'd seen while exploring Lisbon, and watching the kids giggle as the bubbles worked their magic around them.
We noticed the jacuzzi was kept at just the right temperature, warm enough to properly relax the shoulders after a long day of walking, but not so hot that it wasn't comfortable for the children to stay in for a good long while. It quickly became our unofficial base for the whole spa visit, the spot we'd return to in between trying everything else, and more often than not, it's where we'd end up back again right before heading up to the room for the night. A properly relaxing way to end an afternoon of sightseeing around Lisbon, and one both kids asked to do again the very next day.
Now, this was the biggest surprise of the whole spa. There's a large bucket rigged up above one of the pools that fills slowly with water before tipping right over and dumping the whole lot straight onto whoever's standing beneath it. I fully expected it to be freezing cold, the way these sorts of contraptions usually are in saunas and spas elsewhere, the sort of thing that's meant to shock your system after all that heat. I braced myself, told the kids to watch from a safe distance the first time, and stood underneath, ready for an icy shock.
It wasn't cold at all. It was warm, properly hot water, and honestly, once I realised that, I couldn't stop going back for more. What started as something we tried once out of curiosity turned into a running joke and an absolute highlight of every single visit, with the kids queuing up underneath it again and again, howling with laughter each time it tipped, timing how long it took to fill, and taking it in turns to stand underneath and get drenched. Even I, supposedly the sensible adult in the group, ended up joining in more times than I'd like to admit, and by our last day, it had become the first thing we all headed for the moment we walked into the spa.
The sauna itself was wonderfully warm and traditional, all wood-panelled and calm, with soft lighting and the lovely smell of warm timber, and a genuinely lovely spot to sit and properly unwind after a busy day pounding the streets of Lisbon. The heat was just right, dry and enveloping without ever feeling overwhelming, which meant even the children could sit in for a little while with us before nipping back out to the jacuzzi to cool off. We found ourselves popping in for short bursts between the other rooms, five or ten minutes at a time, which suited the children's patience perfectly, and it became a lovely little ritual: a few minutes in the heat of the sauna, then straight back out to the jacuzzi to warm down, over and over.
The Turkish bath, or hammam-style steam room, was another favourite of ours, and it felt like a completely different experience to the sauna. Where the sauna was dry and still, the Turkish bath was thick with warm, humid steam that clung to the skin, and there's something wonderfully soothing about sitting together as a family in that gentle white cloud, barely able to see each other, just chatting and relaxing. It's the sort of experience that's normally reserved for adult spa days, so being able to share it with the children made it feel extra special, and they were fascinated by how different it felt from everything else on offer, asking endless questions about where the steam was coming from and how it worked.
If the bucket tip was the room that made us laugh the most, the sensations shower was the one that surprised us in a completely different way. Rather than the usual single stream of water, this shower cycles through a whole sequence of different sensations: jets of water arriving from different angles, temperatures shifting from cool to warm and back again, and even coloured lighting changing as you go through the programme, tying in beautifully with the chromotherapy theme that runs through the rest of the hotel.
Standing in there for the first time was a proper experience in itself. One moment there'd be a gentle warm mist falling from above, the next a firmer jet hitting your shoulders from the side, then a cooler burst that made all four of us yelp and laugh at the same time. The children found it hilarious, never quite knowing what was coming next, and kept begging to go back in "just one more time" to see if they could guess the next stage of the sequence. As adults, we found it properly invigorating too, the sort of thing that wakes you right up if you've had a lazy afternoon by the jacuzzi and fancy feeling human again before heading out for dinner. It's a short experience, just a few minutes each time, but we must have gone through that sequence a dozen times across our stay, and it never got old.
Beyond the sauna, jacuzzi, Turkish bath and sensations shower, the spa also has a halotherapy salt room, designed to be gently detoxifying and relaxing thanks to the fine salt particles in the air. It's a much quieter, calmer space than the others, and made for a lovely spot to sit and catch our breath in between the more active parts of the circuit. The children were quite content to sit still in there for a few minutes, which, if you're travelling with little ones, you'll know is no small achievement in itself.
We honestly cannot rate the Sense Spa highly enough. It's rare to find a hotel spa that so genuinely welcomes children into the full experience rather than treating them as an afterthought stuck outside the door, and it completely changed the shape of our stay. What we thought might be a quick one-off visit on our first afternoon turned into a daily ritual for all four of us: jacuzzi first, then the sauna, a dip in the Turkish bath, a few rounds of that unexpectedly hot bucket tip, and always finishing on the sensations shower before heading back up to the room, damp-haired and thoroughly relaxed.
Every single feature earned its place in our routine, and there wasn't a single room in the spa that the children didn't ask to go back to at some point during our stay. It's the kind of amenity that turns a good family hotel into a genuinely great one, and it's honestly one of the reasons we're already talking about when we might go back.
If you're travelling to Lisbon as a family and staying at the Corpo Santo, do not skip the Sense Spa. It might just become the part of the holiday your children talk about the most.
We are a family of 4 - mother, father and two children. Our aim is to travel the world and review all travel opportunities to help other families.
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